A new user group was recently formed - see sdwu.net for the new website (will be active 8/20). The site is dedicated to wireless technology - mainly networking however the site is not dedicated to it exclusively.
A mailing list was also setup. Note that the list is not limited to San Diego people only, however we would like to keep any location-specific chat to the Southern California region.
Ok, basic idea I'm working with is a linux bootdisk that supports laptops, PCs etc - it contains just enough data to boot a system, get it on the network (DHCP) and mount a FTP site as a filesystem. Once online the next idea is to boot a BASIC copy of X11 over the 'net. So far the problem with this is that X11 itself is huge and the mini copies (ie: pxes) seems to be setup for specific paths that cannot be used in my situation. Anyone with ideas on how to compile or use a mini X11 distro is encouraged to post a comment with info. Unfortunately I am limited to FTP or Webdav for mounting the filesystem in question and I am also forced to not use BOOTP due to not controlling the DHCP servers. Please post any ideas and suggestions :)
Ok - tonight went to the Isaac Hayes concert at the Navy pier here in San Diego. The concert was good - great music, was nice for being outdoors near the waterfront, good "in person" performer. Besides Isaac's performance there was a woman nearby (52, black, full of soul, used a cane to walk) who was "shakin' her groove thang". She was the second performance of the night (unofficially) - didn't dance too bad and even ended up with a rather large cheering section of her own. The only downer is that he didn't sing "Salty Balls" from the South Park Chef Aid album even though it was on the song list. The friends I was with felt that it was a lack of San Diego enthousiasm that he didn't come back for an encore - or that it could have been a 10pm city noise ordanance... whichever it was, it was kinda sad - I was paying good money to see the look on the 60/70yr old people's faces when he started talking about his "chocolate salty balls"... but oh well - was still a good concert and still glad I went.
Recently the number of attacks on my machines has increased. Unfortunately I'm not even to blame (things would be easier..) The most recent set of attacks prompted our ISP to request that we change IP blocks to help their network routing team better deal with them. Perhaps the most annoying part of the attacks is that the attackers end up taking down sites that have nothing to do with their target. I'd like to know what they think about taking down a family's e-mail server, the San Diego Women's Chorus site or affecting the lives of over a thousand other customers, not including people trying to use the sites.
I think the problem goes back to the same thing that you see on TV these days with everyone thinking that if they feel they are "wronged" that retaliation is the only answer. It's like the students who try to shoot their teachers for not giving them the grade they think they deserve. It's like the parents at a kid's soccer game taking a punch at the ref or even worse - a kid. Everyone thinks that they're entitled to something and when they don't get it, they decide that violence (or in this case a DDOS attack) is the answer.
What ever happened to walking away? How about not using the service if you don't like how it's run? What about sending in a well phrased e-mail explaining the situation to someone in charge?
Instead of dealing with things responsibly, people these days seem to think retaliation is the only answer. We can only hope that the world changes it's way of thinking before things get too much worse.