[Techtalk] War flying in SiliValley

[Akkana]

jennyw writes:
> Ars Technica just published another story about war flying, this time in
> Silicon Valley.  The results are interesting ...
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/3q02/warflying-2.html
> 
> I thought I'd post this here since we've discussed WLANs before and
> cruising around seeing if they're as easy to access as people say ...

When I got my 802.11b modem (for work, where I knew there was a network
set up) I naturally wanted to play with it that night.  I downloaded
a little package called xnetstrength mentioned by someone on one
of the lists here, which basically just graphs the output of the
appropriate /proc file; and then I watched the blips as we drove
from San Jose up 880 and 101 to Mountain View (covering some of
the same area that the Ars Technica article covers).

Basically, the meter was at zero the whole way except one tiny blip.
We drove to my building at work, where I know there's a net, and
walked up to the door: still nothing.  (I didn't have my badge with
me that night, so didn't go in.)  After dinner we drove around a few
business parks before going home ... still nothing.

The modem isn't broken -- it works fine when I'm on the second
floor at work.  If I leave xnetstrength running and walk
downstairs, it goes to zero about halfway down to the first floor
(explaining why I didn't see anything that first night outside
the front door).

Obviously all these people who are logging into nets at 4500 feet
are doing something very different from what I'm doing.  
What's the deal?

	...Akkana