
Wireless Networks to Native Reservations 87
akb writes: "Interesting article entitled Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks describing a project which provided three Indian reservations near San Diego with wireless broadband connectivity. The collaboration between UC San Diego and the Southern California Tribal Chairman Association has attracted additional funding from HP's Digital Village Program doubling the original NSF allocation, which will allow the network to expand to connect 18 reservations to the Internet and educational facilities. The network sports a 45mbps wireless backbone with 802.11b uplinks." The HPWREN pages have a lot of interesting information, including specifications for their 45 megabit solar-powered relays.
Smoke signals can be tough to read. (Score:1)
Re: Selling New York (Score:2)
It was goods worth about $20, and had they been able to invest it in some sort of compound interest generating fund at the time, today they'd be able to buy all of Manhattan, including the buildings. A fair trade, I'd say. Besides, if they'd turned Manhattan into a maximum security prison in 1997 like they were supposed to, it wouldn't be worth very much,would it?
Online casinos (Score:1)
USA out of America! :-)
Re:Online casinos (Score:1)
+++
ATH0
Doh!
Re:Online casinos (Score:1)
Hey! Stop-um rain dance! Cloud gods cause Chief Carpel-Tunnel's Quake game to lag.
Re:Online casinos (Score:1)
Sometimes, the children have to set right what their fathers did wrong - at least if they have a more evolved sense of ethics and higher moral standards. I can, in a way, understand the settlers seeing the natives as a threat (especially since the government wanted to portray them as such) but that doesn't justify us hanging on to their land and even stealing more for uranium mines and whatnot. BTW, I don't like the Israeli occup... Settling of the Gaza strip and West bank either.
Re:Online casinos (Score:1)
Re:Online casinos (Score:1)
Seriously, the ones that aren't showing profits - are they just too far off in the deserts/whereever to get the crowds in or did they overinvest in the facilities to begin with? I've just seen the profitable ones on TV and kinda assumed all of them made a killing... The faltering ones should really think about going online, in this economy there should be no problem finding geeks willing to hack up their platforms for glass pearls and some mescal juice.
Re:Online casinos (Score:2)
Wireless and 3G (Score:2)
Personally I can't wait till the day when my laptop has a wireless 3G card that can connect at high speed whenever and where ever I want.
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:1)
Can you imagine my delight when I saw the Bluetooth stuff in the 2.4.8 kernel xconfig? I don't have the hardware yet, but just seeing it in there gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling that nothing from Redmond ever has come close to providing. *thinks back* Well, OK, the Shell Preview for NT 3.51 was pretty close... Anyone know if XP has any Bluetooth stuff included? I seem to recall they gave Firewire a bit of a miss, maybe they did the same with BT?
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:1)
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:1)
I've posted this before, but I still want someone to build it: A complete modular portable wireless PC system consisting of a laptop/webpad, a cordless headset (with mike built-in, skull resonance fashion) and a phone/PDA. All of the components talk Bluetooth with each other and all of them work on their own or together with any of the others. The headset would store 30 minutes worth of MP3 or Ogg songs in walk-alone mode or stream them (or radio, or phone-over-IP or whatever) from the phone/PDA (2 hours' worth of storage) or laptop. All of them sync automatically when in range, keep track of friends (a REAL psychic friend's network!) nearby and so on, and so forth. The Star Trek-like comm badge for activating the voice-recognition system is mandatory. Gimme now! I wanna be a gargoyle too!
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:2)
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:1)
Anyway, I see 802.11b (why can't someone come up with a reasonable name for this?) and Bluetooth as different solutions to different problems in different situations, albeit with a few overlaps in the middle somewhere.
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:2)
I think you might have to wait, since the military just changed their mind [msnbc.com] about opening a large part of the spectrum.
Re:Wireless and 3G (Score:2)
There is a threat to 3G from wireless LANs, but that's from operators like MobileStar, who are setting up access points in 4,000 Starbucks locations across the US (and similar operators in Europe, some with 3G licenses). If 802.11b can get its power requirements down, and if coverage improves, it could prove to be a real competitor to 3G, particularly because its hardware and spectrum costs are already very low compared to 3G.
And once they have this highspeed access...? (Score:1)
Re:And once they have this highspeed access...? (Score:1)
In six months... (Score:1)
Cool Stuff (Score:2)
Solar is Great! (Score:2)
Re:Solar is Great! (Score:2)
Re:Solar is Great! (Score:1)
Re:Solar is Great! (Score:1)
I wondered about having the propane delivered out in the middle of nowhere, but, as one guy who had been there a long time said, when the EPA made them put in porta-johns, the prospect of getting propane refils delivered was "no worse than getting the shitters cleaned"
Re:Solar is Great! (Score:1)
Security? (Score:2)
Of course no one would ever want to steal from the Indians... Oh, wait, nevermind.
Re:Security? (Score:3, Informative)
fence with razor wire on the top.
I suppose this stuff gets vandalized from time-to-time. A few rounds from a 30-'06 are more likely than theft, though - check out the road signs
next time you visit us out in the InterMountain West.
My point's simple, though - this stuff's no more likely to be ripped off or vandalized than the expensive equipment that already decorates some of
our mountaintops, and you deal with it the same way. Insure and replace as necessary.
Lightning's probably a bigger risk, anyway. Mountains out here get slammed consistently (I assume they're locating the relays on mountains).
Re:Security? (Score:2)
our mountaintops, and you deal with it the same way. Insure and replace as necessary.
I'm sure insurance companies would charge a premium because of this, and because of the high premiums, corporate backers would have a much higher bottom line cash outflow, and thus would be less likely to invest. Until the technology can come down into the hundreds of dollars range, I don't see this becoming wide spread.
4A 55 53 54 20 4D 59 20 24 30 2E 30 32
Coming Soon! (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm serious...here in California tribes have already gotten permission to run casinos on their land (although I believe the matter is still going through the courts) so then could the same tribes run their own online gaming?
Do Indian tribes have to abide by the Hague Convention or the Berne treaty or whatever that copyright protection treaty is?
Think about it...Indians are desperately seeking self-reliance, which is pretty much impossible given the crappy ass desert land they were given. So what if they built a few wind turbines and ran a data haven? Do you think Disney et. al. could really bully them?
I would be really intersted in finding out about this. We have been looking for safe havens and if we put Indian reservations on the Internet that sounds like it might fit the bill?
- JoeShmoe
Re:Coming Soon! (Score:2)
Depends on the tribe. Each tribe has a treaty with the US, defining (among other things) how US law affects them.
Some have stupid treaties, and are essentially US territories with little autonomy.
Others, like the Chickasaws for instance, have treaties that fully preserve their sovereignity, and are essentially another country inside the US, subject to US law only if their tribal legislature votes to be subject to it.
We have been looking for safe havens and if we put Indian reservations on the Internet that sounds like it might fit the bill?
Some tribes have thought about this. And some already have ISPs.
The Chickasaws had one (I know, I built it), but they sold it. However, to the best of my knowledge it still exists on tribal land, and is owned by a Chickasaw, so it is probably still not subject to US law.
Re:Coming Soon! (Score:1)
One of the casinos biggest is on the Pala, which rolled out the first phase of this wireless project. Pala has a huge advertising budget and attracts tens of thousands of gamblers from all over Southern California. Most (all?) of these casinos are nominally fronted by Indians but are actually built, managed and operated day-by-day by Nevada gaming companies.
The casinos have been a finincial bonanza to these reservations and, frankly, good for them. However, this story is NOT about poor rural Native Americans with limited prospects being given a leg up with modern technology.
Safe Havens (Score:1)
Re:Safe Havens (Score:2)
So, if the Indian nations want to try to get self-reliance by forming an electronic economy, lawmakers are going to have a tough time siding with their traditional lobbyists. Who wants to appear to be trouncing on the already impoverished Indian nations to line the pockets of a few select media corporations? I think it would be an interesting way to test the laws, and that's why I would encourage people to investigate this.
- JoeShmoe
I work for a company that does this... (Score:1, Informative)
Our transmission rates are way above T1 and because there is no cost of leasing lines or anything we can provide it cheap (comparatively).
We also put up 1 tower in a nearby town. This one tower covers the whole town. We got funding from the county because the county court system sits in that town and needed to be on broadband but couldn't get to it in the traditional ways.
We just rent space from radio stations on their towers - so the setup is minimal. It really is a great system
Fried
Wow! (Score:2, Funny)
(Sorry, it's a reference to a very bad old joke. I just couldn't resist the opportunity.)
Wampum? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not wanting to be a PC thug, but here's the entry in the AP Style Book:
Indians American Indian is the preferred term for those in the United States. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Native American is acceptable in quotations and names of organizations.
In news stories about American Indians, such words as wampum, warpath, powwow, tepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive. Be careful and certain of their usage.
-Peter
Re:Wampum? (Score:2)
Re:Wampum? (Score:1)
Russel Means likes the phrase American Indian.. to quote, "Because it means I'm an American first, and then an Indian... we're the only minority that puts the American first"
Piss on all political correctness! (Score:2)
AP Style Book?? (Score:2)
Here are a couple of sample sentences from today's front page:
I look forward to your AP Style Book critique of the above!
Kevin Costner's latest movie... (Score:1)
could this harken an Indian re-emergence? (Score:1)
Re:Native Americans -- an old timer's perspective (Score:1)
It was early one morning, my mammy had just woken me, and the sun was shining into the back of the wagon, when we heard the whooping. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live. They came down on us like God's own vengeance, slashing with their machetes and raining burning arrows on our wagons. The camp was in chaos, half-dressed folk running every which way, guns firing, wagons burning. My mammy grabbed me and in all the chaos, ran free of the camp, and hid in a gully. When she came out, everyone was dead. We holed up in a nearby cave - more like a crack in the rocks - and when the sheriff's posse rode in from the next town, we was rescued.
'Course, that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I mostly sit around, trolling on /. and writing perl code. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. When I get bored, I go down to the injun casino near here - I figure one of these days, I'll win big on the slots, and that'll show those redskinned sons of jackals!!
So don't you be tellin me there ain't no injuns. I seen em, alright, I seen em...
Rural networking (Score:2)