A friend and I were googling my name to find the oldest reference still on the internet. Things seem to disapear after a while and it appears that I've been erased before 1997 but the positive outcome from this exercise was to find a spoof of an old newsletter I contributed to. In that newsletter was a quasi-german warning message which I've remembered but missed. With a tear in my eye I share it with you now. If you speak German, pretend you don't or you may miss the message.
| ACHTUNG! |
| Alles Touristen und non-Technischen Look ens Peepers! Das computenmachine is nicht fur gerfinger poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Der Machine is diggen by experten only. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottenpicken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights! |
Anyway I'd been using Powerline networking for some time and it's worked wonderfully because you never need drivers for the network. How it works is you plug your network cable into a powerline bridge and then plug the bridge into the electrical wall socket. Do this for each location and you have an instant network! It's completely painless. Only problem is your electrical wiring needs to be perfect and mine to the garage in the new place isn't. My print speeds were so horrible that I was copying data to my laptop and carrying it down there to print. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that isn't the solution. I've always shied away from wireless outside of occasional use on the road because of the security implementations but it appears I have no choice short of rewiring my house. The new 802.11n stuff is tempting but without more testing I'm not going to bite. I already have a Linux powered Linksys WRT-54g which has served me well. My plan was not to add wireless cards to all the machines in the garage but rather set up a wireless bridge and plug a Gig switch into it so the servers could talk to each other at 1000Gbits and the rest of the world at 54Mbits. My biggest requirementis the router has to support the Linux 
If you don't know what dd-wrt is you're in for a treat. It's a replacement firmware operating system for many consumer based routers. It gained it's fame on the Linksys WRT-54 series and that's where I came into contact with it. The Linksys WRT-54g was a Linux router and several firmware replacement projects stemmed from it. I started using a paid for replacement called Talisman. The firmware was encoded and I lost the original file once and didn't want to go through the hassle of getting the author to give me another so I decided to look around and see what else was out there. Well, that and there was a lot of controversy about the developer's practice of stealing other people's code and then acting like a copywrite Nazi when anyone else wanted his code. I don't like supporting people like that so I switched to dd-wrt. DD-WRT adds many features to your router like ssh access, QOS, wireless bridging etc.. There really isn't any reason that I can think of for not using it. 
Hopefully they don't avoid one criminal only to find another breaking into vending machines. Original story at the 
