Grant Willey writes "Deploying a License-Free Wireless Wide Area Network? Want to learn the intricate details from an authoritative expert who has personally designed and installed hundreds of license-free outdoor broadband wireless networks? This book isn't just for WISPs (wireless Internet service providers), this book is for you!" Read on for Grant's review of Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks from Cisco Press.

Codeine writes "Presentations to the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) of the FCC by Vanu Bose "Software Radio: Enabling Dynamic Spectrum Management" and by David Reed "How wireless networks scale: the illusion of spectrum scarcity." Counterintuitive results from multiuser information theory, network architectures, and physics: Multipath increases capacity, Repeating increases capacity, Motion increases capacity, Repeating reduces energy (safety), Distributed computation increases battery life, Channel sharing decreases latency and jitter. Highly recommended presentation suggesting that the cost of spectrum management by "exclusive property rights" mandated by the State outweighs the advantages we could obtain from a new model that acknowledges physics and the 70 years of receiver development since the regulatory model was adopted at the time of the sinking of the Titanic."

Slashback has updates tonight on nuclear-safe hosting facilities, the temporary return of Metricom's Ricochet service, and a possible problem with Apple's newest upgrade for anyone using Xfree86 under Mac OS X.

Q-Neb writes "I'm beginning to get freaked out by the degree of electromagnetic waves I know are floating through me at all times. I work in the computing hub of a small college, surrounded by wires, a wireless AirConnect LAN, and about 500 students constantly gabbing on their cell-phones. As of this weekend, our office has become overrun by ants, apparently attracted by the high microwave presence (and leftover Coke)... How can I measure the amount of airborne communication passing through my workplace or my home? (Am I just paranoid, or is 3Com really out to get me?)"

Leif Bloomquist writes: "I've been involved in something called the Mining Automation Program, a 5 year R&D effort to create tele-operated and autonomous mining machines. The program just wrapped up, and the world's first totally robotic mine is now in operation in Sudbury, Canada. It's very cool stuff, and yes, in a way, it's a precursor to the robots in "Descent". :) We had to bring together space+robotics technology, wireless LANs, and even virtual reality and video game interfaces. The whole point is to enhance safety by having no humans underground, and to boost productivity by saving the time to travel underground and have one driver controlling a whole fleet."

This week's "main" interview guest is L0pht Heavy Industries as a group. (We hope to have answers from Linux International head Jon "maddog" Hall tomorrow). Many insightful questions for the L0pht guys were posted Monday. Today, lots of insightful answers on everything from political controls on the Internet to hardware hacking. (Click below to read.)

Most of the questions we got for crypto guru Bruce Schneier earlier this week were pretty deep, and so are his answers. But even if you're not a crypto expert, you'll find them easy to understand, and many of Bruce's thoughts (especially on privacy and the increasing lack thereof) make interesting reading even for those of you who have no interest in crypto because you believe you have "nothing to hide." This is a *long and strong* Q&A session. Click Below to read it all.

This Thanksgiving, I was far from home, visting with two young geeks who set across the country with $10 extra bucks looking for good computer jobs. On Thanksgiving eve, they helped me to my first online gaming kill, thus inspiring me to recount the many ways in which I give thanks for geeks.