[afnog] Some cool bits and pieces

[Geert Jan de Groot]

Thanks for the pointers, however, a few comments:

> (1) "Powerline carrier", a.k.a. ethernet over mains wiring
> These are little plug-in bridges with just an RJ45 socket and a power plug.
> Ethernet frames are sent directly over the power lines, using frequencies in
> the range 4.5-20MHz. 

They cause a lot of interference on shortwave and elsewhere,
because mains wiring was never intended for these frequencies
and these frequencies just, um, radiate.

If you are dependent on shortwave for communications, 
then you don't even want your neighbour to use these, 
let alone yourself.
(note: the manufacturers claim "no interference" but at the same time
use all kinds of legal tricks to avoid reports saying otherwise
from being publicized).

For workshops, we'd replace a bag of cheap cables with a box of
expensive-looking-and-hence-taxable-devices that cause all kinds
of havoc with customs folk, not to mention the problems 
with different power sockets on the continent..

> However, it would be quite possible to run a workshop with one Xen server
> running a dozen FreeBSD hosts, and have people ssh and/or VNC into their own
> virtual machine from Windows.

Note that you'd need a hefty machine (lot of RAM) for this,
hence you replace your requirement for a bunch of cheap machines
(which can be made to work even with broken CPU fans sometimes..)
with a big, hefty single-point of failure.

Second, I think that the point is to show that you can run a decent
operating system on hardware that is unsuitable for w*ndows and 
yield a very versatile machine. Not sure if running 
an alien operating system in an emulator would give the same message.

But it's sure nice toys.

Geert Jan