
Dave Hughes' Campaign To Connect 6 Billion Brains 109
polarfleece writes "The Asociated Press has a fine story about Dave Hughes, one of my personal heros. For those of you who may never have heard of him, he is THE pioneer in the use of wireless networking for mass connectivity. His main website is at wireless.oldcolo.com." An anonymous reader also point to the profile of Hughes accompanying the article.
Hughes? (Score:1, Funny)
well count me in -- cocks for women definitely! (Score:1)
hopefully this will be implemented in our lifetimes.
But... (Score:4, Funny)
But the real question... How is he at Counter-Strike!
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Probally not very good, but I still woudln't want to be next to him at a lan party
From the computer speaker comes the thud of the GayWP
Geek: HAHAHAHA I 0wnz0r3d j00!!!!!!
Dave: I'm going to knife you for that
Geek: You'll never get close enough to knife me, I have m4d AWP
Dave: You're already close enough for me to knife you
Geek: You're dead, and the games doesn't start for another...hey, what's that in your boot?
Dave: (buries boot knife in geek's chest)
Dave: n00b
yeah, but (Score:2)
I bet he's a bunny-hopper...
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Also he was named one of the 100 most influential individuals in the Computer Age. Lots of article on his use of Spread spectrum, and demoing it at colleges across the USA.
Sounds like a very interesting guy. At 74, doing all this work for schools across the world, he actually understand the need for the Internet and open information. (For his gathering of information, legal, etc...)
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hughes is lobbying for the FCC to increase the power to at least 5 watts, which would expand the service area to 50 to 70 miles. That would make a big difference in rural areas, he noted. The FCC staff originally recommended that the transmissions be allowed at up to 100 watts at any frequency above 75 mhz. The spread-spectrum technology allows practically unlimited transmissions without interference, Hughes said, but the objections of companies such as Motorola and Bell South helped to stunt those potentially visionary rules.
Post-mortem computing? (Score:1, Informative)
A regular pony express rider for the 20th century (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is that Johnny Internet-seed?
Re:A regular pony express rider for the 20th centu (Score:1)
It is a good idea however. (Score:2, Insightful)
OH WAIT THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE 3G CELLULAR NETWORK!!!
Rural Pennsylvania Wishlist (Score:1)
Oh yeah, while you're at it, could you bring us some broadband too?
hmm (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how "strongly encouraged" his retirement was......
Another interesting picture (Score:2)
What kind of picture is this to paint?
With a long white goatee and stout body, Hughes resembles Orson Welles in his later days...
He sometimes taught English classes at West Point with a parakeet perched on his shoulder...
"He's a military man who says, 'I know where my hill is, and I'm going to take it,' and he didn't really care who got in the way."
Arrrr, me hardies! 100 watts for all and a broadside at those worthless telcos!
He's right, you know.
Whoa... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoa... (Score:3, Interesting)
It... is a problem. That's part of the reason why technical documentation is so (relatively) rare.
Re:Whoa... (Score:1)
(remind me to stop contributing to the occasional documentation project...)
The solution (Score:1)
Hence, to get a better the talent pool for documentation writers -- outlaw development of 3D shoot 'em ups like FPS and all other 3D games!
Re:Whoa... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whoa... (Score:1)
Re:Whoa... (Score:2)
Re:Haven't we heard this before?? (Score:1, Redundant)
Quote4: Save me Jeebus.
Re:Haven't we heard this before?? (Score:1)
Ooooooooh... CONNECT 6 billion brains (Score:5, Funny)
I thought
Re:Ooooooooh... CONNECT 6 billion brains (Score:2)
Re:Ooooooooh... CONNECT 6 billion brains (Score:2)
Dave Hughes' Campaign to Connect 6 Billion Brains [in a Beowulf Cluster]
Steve
Re:Ooooooooh... CONNECT 6 billion brains (Score:2, Funny)
Zombies: Brains. Brains! BRAAAIIIINSSSS!
[Zombie's tap heads of /. readers and Homer J.]
[FX: Hollow echoing sound]
[Zombie's exit stage right in pursuit of more fruitful sources...]
Yeah, brain donations from /. - that'll work....plenty to spare...
Re:Ooooooooh... CONNECT 6 billion brains (Score:2)
Switching a letter or two around has got to be the lowest form of comedy... perhaps just above fart jokes.
Re:I saw this movie already... (Score:1)
I was going more for a plus +1 funny and I have a feeling it is for your mod reason I got off topic slapped.
I figured it would be mis-moded but oh well, sorry if you dont catch the reference.
Gibson & Stephenson (Score:5, Insightful)
Hughes is like some weird combination between the cowboy hackers of Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the dude who was pushing the hive mind project in Cryptonomicon.
Any thoughts? Do you think that Gibson or Stephenson ran across Col. Dave Hughes, USA, Ret., in their research? Think the Cowboy Curser inspired any personalities in Cryptonomicon or SnowCrash? Neuromancer? Count Zero? Mona Lisa Overdrive?
What's your opinion?
Re:Gibson & Stephenson (Score:1)
Just what every industry needs (Score:5, Insightful)
One does have to wonder though if connecting previously sheltered cultures, like Sherpas who rarely leave their home area, or small tribes in South America, will encourage them to join the rest of the world. If I had no previous contact with the outside world's mass culture, one look at the internet would scare the living hell outta me. Slashdot alone would convince me all ousiders should be killed on sight.
Re:Just what every industry needs (Score:3, Interesting)
According to my sociology-minor roommate when I was at university, that's literally what happens to small sheltered cultures. However, because they don't have any pricy exports, they end up changing from a functional non-technical culture into one that expends most of its efforts trying to get its hands on the trinkets they see Westerners with. The result is that their society is basically converted into a theme park for people with more money than them.
Growing access. (Score:5, Funny)
Soko
Re:mod parent up! (Score:1)
Coke works better when you snort it, n00b.
Re:Growing access. (Score:1)
Garden analogy (Score:1)
And use MS Windows as fertilizer?
What we'd hear from some (in)famous brains (Score:5, Funny)
George W. Bush's brain: I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq. I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq. I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq.
Tony Blair's brain: I must do whatever Dubya says cos Dubya's a smart man and he obviously knows what he's doing. Now where's my leash?
Saddam Hussein's brain: I didn't have anything to do with that attack. Why's George picking on me all of a sudden?
Osama Bin Laden's brain: Boy, am I glad that George's forgotten about me!
Bill Gates's brain: With all these wars to worry about I think the Government's forgotten about me. Time to pull out those plans for world domination again.
Pamela Anderson's brain: Gee, My boobs are looking kinda small. Time to call the surgeon again.
Britney Spear's brain: Damn that Christina's dirty. I wish I was.
Justin Timberlake's brain: Damn, I wish I was Michael Jackson. I'd love to be in his shoes.
Michael Jackson's brain: Damn, I wish I was with Justin Timberlake. I'd love to be in his trousers.
Slashdot editor's brain: Hmmm, yet another duplicate story/obvious hoax/shameless plug for a "me too" product. Now where's that "post" button gone?
No, not that Dave Hughes... (Score:1)
And here I was thinking it was a story about this guy [comedy.com.au]
Campaign To Connect 6 Billion Brains? (Score:2)
Oh, and beer. Lots of beer.
The Internet of the 1970's (Score:4, Interesting)
The reporter is apparently too young to remember that before the Internet was available to the public, there were things called "billboards".
Billboards could be networked in the sense that you could send email or transfer files between them, but it was more like store and forward networking rather than a fully connected net like we have today.
They mention that Colonel Hughes subscribed to The Source. That was a commercial billboard that was around before CompuServe. I guess it went out of business because CompuServe became more popular.
I considered subscribing to the source when I bought an ASCII terminal and 1200 baud modem in 1983, but decided not to because it was exhorbitantly expensive, being charged by the minute of connection time. I couldn't afford that on my college student budget.
The Source was really a big timesharing computer that lots of people logged into, not really a network at all.
I'm pretty sure it took more than ten years for the Internet to have more than a hundred hosts.
Colonel Hughes might have been able to access it if he was still in the military at the time, but it wasn't widely available even to the military.
To illustrate how unavailable the Internet was back then - I got the money to buy that ASCII terminal by working as a summer research assistant for an astronomer at CalTech.
The astronomy department was considering gettings its two VAXen connected to the ARPANet (it wasn't called the Internet yet). I don't mean "two main computers", I mean "two computers" - everyone used vt100 terminal to compute, and took turns at the extraordinarily expensive Grinnel image processing workstations, which had a 512 by 512 resolution and were the size of a refrigerator, mostly consisting of RAM.
Anyway, a couple machine at Tech were already connected to the ARPANet, I believe just the Physics and Computer Science UNIX VAXen.
After quite some heated debate within the department, it was decided that the expense of getting connected to the ARPANet just wasn't worth it. They felt it was a better use of the department's money to invest in research, instrumentation and traditional computing resources.
For example, they bought a third VAX, an 11/750, that was smaller than the two 11/780's we had. It came with a newfangled GUI workstation (that I could never figure out how to use) that was also the subject of much debate, and set the department back $150,000.
It could routinely support a couple dozen simultaneous terminal users. But I don't think it had the computing power of a 33 Mhz 80386 PC.
Re:The Internet of the 1970's (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you're too young to remember also.
They were called "Bulletin Board Systems," or BBSes.
Sheesh, I feel old.
Re:The Internet of the 1970's (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The Internet of the 1970's (Score:2)
I interviewed with Dave Johnson of Working Software, and he asked me if I was part of the Mac developer community.
I replied that I didn't know any others, I was studying Mac programming very much in isolation.
He told me to get a Compuserve account, so I did. It was still expensive, but I managed to afford it by that time because I was working as a programmer.
For a long time I gave out my email address as 72377.623@compuserve.com.
Sorry, I always called them billboards, even at the time.
Re:The Internet of the 1970's (Score:2)
A much better profile (Score:2)
http://www.west-point.org/academy/dgrad/Nominat
Meanwhile... (Score:1)
The Church of Scientology plans to disconnect 6 billion brains.
And You Don't Seem To Understand... (Score:2, Funny)
Roger's Bar (Score:1, Interesting)
One thing from the old articles was a mention of something he had gotten installed at a local bar. They had a few booths, and one of them had a RJ-11 jack so he could plug in and dial out with his laptop.
The bar is gone now, but he undoubtedly solves the problem with wireless technology instead.
Re:Roger's Bar (Score:1)
*brandishes a billy club* (Score:2)
Yeah, I Know About Dave Hughes! (Score:1)
I remember during the revolt in the Phillipines, Dave came on the WELL and demonstrated how you could fax from your PC. The Chief of Staff of the Phillipine military was an acquaintance of Dave's from West Point, so Dave fired up his PC, crafted a congratulatory message, sent it through a gateway into the fax network, and got a response from the Phillipine military acknowledging receipt.
Doesn't sound like much now, but this was in the mid-80's, when this sort of thing was not common.
Dave is no crackpot...He's definitely an online pioneer.
ultimate mod case (Score:1)
"Hi, this is Dave Hughes. Wanna chat?"
Um, not really.
"Well could you at least brush the leaves off my solar cells? I'm losing power."
Dude, you're the reason there's 6 BILLION people on this IRC server. I'm fucking stepping on your solar cells!