Two carloads of geeks on their way to a perl conference connected their vehicles with WiFi access-points, then uplinked the whole network to the Internet via a cellphone. Why? Because "making a phone call from Pittsburgh to New York while both parties are coasting down I-70 in Illinois wasn't my idea of a smart move. I'd be more inclined to run into them to get their attention; it would have cost the same."

Meng and dha connected using talk on Schwern's laptop and we spent a good 100 miles just finding things to talk about. That's what happens when you work hard to build something that's minimally useful.

After rambling on about movies, making fun of each other's driving and deciding where to stop for dinner we decided to connect our network to the Internet. After all, we needed to send out proof that this was working. Once my cell phone reached a state of moderately reliable service, Meng brought up the link. We logged on to IRC and bragged about our connectivity. We sent email stating our coordinates. We acted like little children on sugar highs.

Link Discuss (via 802.11b Networking News)

Mort Walker has added a new character to the Beetle Bailey pantheon. Chip Gizmo shows up at Camp Swampy, bedecked with such futuristic props as a PDA and a cellphone, and hilarity ensues: "So goes the humor that will follow Chip Gizmo into Camp Swampy, as the computer specialist faces off with old-fashioned Gen. Halftrack. For example, when Gizmo warns Halftrack not to use his pop-out CD-ROM holder for a coffee cup holder, the general relents. Next, Gizmo finds him using it to hold his martini glass." Oh, oh, oh, my sides. Link Discuss (Thanks, Sean!)

News.com ran an extremely FUDdy story about open wireless, quoting an AT&T spokesperson who warns that individuals who run open wireless access points will be liable for crimes committed by wardrivers and passers-by who use their access-points to commit crimes or engage in infringing file-sharing.

It's not actually true, though. As my colleague Fred "Baron" von Lohmann posted to the Pho list:

Hey, it seems to me that anyone who runs an open wireless gateway would be protected from copyright liability arising out of the activities of their neighbors by the DMCA 512(a) safe harbor (the same one that AT&T itself relies on).

So long as you simply pass bits for someone else, without changing or storing them, you're not liable if the bits are infringing. See 17 USC 512(a). (Before you start going on about "notice and takedown" and copyright agents -- none of that mumbo jumbo applies to the 512(a) safe harbor, 'cuz the ISPs had enough clout to make it that way).

So AT&T is blowing smoke -- it's immune from liability for carrying the bits, and so is the subscriber who is running the wireless gateway.

I've been saying it for some time now -- soon we'll *all* be ISPs, and all entitled to the same protections that AOL legislated for itself over the last few years.

Ain't that the sweetest? All the breaks that the ISP lobbies have secured for themselves in Congress apply to anyone who provides access to the Internet, including folks like you and me!

The most insidious thing about this genre of anti-WiFi FUD is that it attacks the idea of anonymity online, as though allowing people to anonymously access the Internet was an irresponsible activity that can only serve the interests of terrorists, child pornographers and warez d00ds.

In fact, anonymous speech is Constitutionally protected in the USA. The Federalist Papers were published anonymously. Whistle-blowers, kids who are curious about STDs and dissidents (just to name three) rely on anonymity to participate in the democratic discourse. Link Discuss (Thanks, Fred!)

Scott sez: "Erik Larsen, Image Comics co-founder and creator/artist/writer of The Savage Dragon, is celebrating the flagship comic's century mark with a 100-page issue to be released this month. The Savage Dragon #100 will feature all-new work by an amazing cavalcade of talents. Here's a sneak-peak at a pin-up by Boing Boing favorite, Bruce Timm." Link Discuss

This week's Onion is out, and I've created a bookmark file for Mozilla that will load every page in the new ish in its own tab. If you've got Moz, right-click/control-click the link below and select "Save Link Target As..." Save the file, then select Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... Once the bookmarks window is open, select Tools --> Import... and choose the file. You'll have a new bookmark, called "The Onion Aug 1 2002." Select it and your Moz window will open up with all the pages of the new Onion in it.

Why do this? I dunno. I have an idea that there could be an RSS aggregator or similar that outputted Moz tab-bookmark files. Wouldn't it be cool if every morning, you sat down to your browser and had a tab-file that would load up all the day's news stories (say, every link from the previous day's Boing Boing or Wired News or Slashdot) -- click it before you take your shower, and by the time you're done, voila, tabbed newspaper! Link Discuss

Royksopp's new video, "You Remind Me," is an amazing collection of morphed infographics. If you ask me, the song's crap, but the pictures are steroidal PowerPoint magic. BTW, there's a RealPlayer for OSX now! Link (Warning: RealMedia clip) Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

The Indie Gam Jam is a "yearly game design and programming event designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry. A very small volunteer team of professional game developers creates a new custom game engine with a single technology focus, and then we invite a slightly larger group of game programmer-designers to get together and make as many innovative games as possible over a four-day period. The games are shown at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference, and the code is released on SourceForge under the GNU General Public License, so everyone can freely experiment with the engine source code and games."

They just had their first show, and created 12 games in four days! Link Discuss

The University of Calgary library just took receipt of a 35,000+ volume collection of classic science fiction and genre pulps. The donation came from the estate of William "Not That William Gibson" Gibson, a 92-year-old who died last year. Link Discuss (via /.)