Because WiFi is still half-duplex, similar to hubs that many of us used in the mid-90's. 802.11ac starts to address some of the of the simplex issues by placing users on individual spatial streams within a channel, but the communication between the client and the access point is still half-duplex, it's just somewhat isolated from other clients connected to the same AP...

The other major issue is that WiFi is still using ISM frequencies... 900MHz was squashed before WiFi was prevalent, 2.4GHz is squashed now, and with Apple finally putting a 5GHz radio in the iPhone, 5GHz will be a mess in the next few years... though with higher throughput, higher bandwidth and lower signal propogation, 5GHz will be more manageable.

The whole conversation is somewhat moot though, as 802.11ac has yet to be ratified.

+1 for Arista. They are doing some pretty amazing stuff. Check out http://techfieldday.com/2012/arista-presents-networking-field-day-3/ for videos of a recent tech talk.

If not for Microsoft's 5 billion dollar investment in Apple in1997, Apple would probably not exist today. Just saying...

Well that AND battery life.

Why wait to turn it on? You're right, it does only take 5 minutes. Even if only 5 of your clients connect @ 5GHz, you have 5 users that may see an improvement and may become advocates for you and what you are doing.

Money is not the problem, accountability is.

Here in California, local property tax money is redistributed throughout the state. Often schools is poorer neighborhoods get more money per student than the schools in more affluent areas. Heck, in some districts teachers get paid more to teach in the under-achieving schools. Nothing has gotten better except the employment at schools.

Many, and the teacher unions have shot it down every time. Good teachers can not be rewarded and bad teachers can not be punished. The only reward is for those who stay around the longest.

I don't know if apple fixed their wireless driver in IOS 5, but I have found that the iPad running IOS 4 does not 'steer' to 5GHz when presented with the same SSID on 2.4GHz and 5GHz. This has been a consistent experience using Cisco, HP (E-series), and Ruckus wireless networks. With some of my customers, we have had to create different SSIDs for the bands to get their fleets of iPads off 2.4GHz.

If he really meant it, he wouldn't have shown the phone...

marketing fluff, nothing to see here.

I was in High School 20 years ago and not until 1992 was I even exposed to NetWare (as a client user in college, I remember everything being menu driven. wow, that was a long time ago...). I'm interested- what did NetWare then do then that AD doesn't do now?

I am not trying to troll or discount your comment- I'm truly interested. I have also heard a bunch of folks talk up eDirectory being the shit as well, but have yet to come across it.

Having worked for many health care facilities over the years, including those with EMT/Ambulance staff, I can tell you that ambulance drivers and dispatchers suffer from periods of insane boredom while waiting for the next call to come in. During this downtime, they monkey with the PCs, browse some of the most pointless/inappropriate websites, and try plugging anything with an ethernet jack in to your network. The latter includes personal laptops, wireless access points and satellite/cable boxes. Solutions to this include 802.1x/NAP and even just getting the crews a DSL/Cable internet connection for their personal use. Like many things in I.T. (and life in general), the more you restrict someone's access to something they want, the more they will work against your efforts to restrict them.

In this case, I'll put my money on an outside computer being plugged in to the network.

I've never had to deal with I.T. in a fire station, but I can guess it's every bit as bad, if not worse.

Where's the 'Like' button?

Is this web 2.0? Oh wait, ./ is in the cloud now!

I'm cloud computing! woohoo!

Maybe buy him a baseball glove or a frisbee- something to spur activity and interaction with others. If he's a tech genius, the last thing he needs is a computer- he's already mastered that.

Call your local homeless shelter or charity. Maybe they could use your netbook to get someone on their feet again.

Lighten up, Francis....

I wasn't challenging the laws of thermodynamics, I was challenging the parent comment "It is currently illegal to resell electricity that you generate using waste".

As for my resume', I'll spare you the details, but my background is in energy and energy transmission contracts- more specifically, natural gas sourced co-generation.

Besides the "illegal" comment from the parent post, the statement "You don't have much incentive to install a way to reprocess that heat", is BS. There are thousands of facilities here in California selling electricity produced from 'waste' heat as a bi-product of their primary business. There are incentives for doing this- specifically, decreased natural gas transmission costs for BTUs put back on to the grid in the form of electricity (electricity that they market themselves or sell through marketers). Check out http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/ and search 'cogeneration'. It's a huge industry here in CA and is heavily 'incentive-ised' and subsidized as an alternative to building power plants.

What? You better tell that to the thousands of dumps across the country burning 'waste' methane to produce electricity to sell.

Many industrial facilities also produce energy from waste heat and manufacturing bi-products. It's called co-generation. For example, many cement manufacturers burn natural gas (among other things) to produce lime-ash. They take the waste heat and produce steam to turn generating turbines, often producing more electricity than they use.