My 36 hours in London are drawing to a close. Here are a few tidbits…
The National Gallery displays a painting that Britons chose as their favorite in all of the U.K. It is a Turner showing a Royal Navy sailing warship being towed to the dock for dismantling. The ship had become obsolete due to the advent of steam power. A portrait of technological obsolescence is apparently the favorite image of Britons polled.
Lunch was with David Adams, Ruby on Rails expert, at the Itsu sushi chain outlet in Piccadilly where Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian spies.
The afternoon was spent with a stroll through St. James Park to gawk at an incredibly huge Russian pelican, a stop into a bike shop to look at the folding Mezzo, and a walk around the Tate Britain museum.
The evening was spent at the National Theater’s production of the Tenn. Williams play Rose Tattoo. It may sound stupid to travel thousands of miles to see an American play, but the trip was worth it and the play is a lot less depressing than the rest of Williams’s work.
Attempts to steal wireless with the new Toshiba Windows Vista laptop have proved fruitless. I am staying in a friend’s apartment overlooking the Thames from an unfashionable suburb of London near Heathrow. It is dense enough that you’d expect to see 3 or 4 unsecured networks and a handful of secured ones. All that the laptop can see are two secured networks. Wireless Internet may not be as popular as it is in the U.S. and Londoners are less trusting of their neighbors it would seem.
Off to Tanzania next…
Well, at least in Germany DSL routers are sold with an individual admin password and WEP pass phrase (noted on a sticker at the bottom). Because of legal regulations being rather strict (the owner is responsible for any illegal downloads etc) this type of access point has become the majority since the last 12-18 months.
Well, have you tried making a dish out of WiFi USB?
It has quite long distance. I have seen some videos on youtube where some guy was doing it.
It may be worth noting that the Turner painting can also be viewed as the handoff from the age of sail to the age of steam, i.e. in favor of technilogical advancement.
One reason for the lack of Wifi may be related to EU standards, assuming that Britain follows them. Output power of the Wifi access point is restricted to 100mW or less, limiting the range of each device.