Geekularity

For the last three months, I’ve watched as directional Wi-Fi antennas, which resemble a Pringles Chips container, have been mounted on street lamps and traffic signals throughout Pleasant Hill, CA. Being too lazy to actually walk over to city hall in order to get the facts, I chose to just speculate what the purpose these antennas would serve. I assumed that the city was using it as in inexpensive solution to mesh some traffic cameras and police patrol cars together. I didn’t think it would be made public. Well, I am partly right.

As of today, they have the network open to the public in the downtown area as well as near my house while they are working the bugs out of the system. This open period will only last for a limited time before they close it up and just grant access to Pleasant Hill Police and the Contra Costa County Sheriff. Aww Shucks! I was so excited this last weekend when I saw the SSID show up in my available networks list, while sitting in my living room. But alas, I will have to keep my Comcast account for a little bit longer. Here’s a link to the Contra Costa Times article.

Anyone else notice the legalese sub title at the end of Apple’s Touché Ad? It discloses that you must purchase Windows XP and Parallels software in order run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Windows XP is obvious, but why is apple promoting Parallels over its own product, Bootcamp. Granted, Bootcamp is still in beta, and it’s a dual boot concept, whereas Parallels is a virtualization solution. But to not even mention their own product leads me to think that Apple is thinking about scuttling the Bootcamp solution.

It’s not looking too good in the current Congress.  Declan McCullagh, staff writer at CNET News has a pretty good scoresheet article which covers the current status of most of the pending and dead legislation. Link