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There has been a lot of coverage about wirless lan (WLAN) technology.  Such as greater speeds, and that the enterprise lans are being switched over.

Hold it.

The reasoning behined WLAN has been forgotten.  One reason is mobility.  Not the kind in the movies where the hero is driving a car at 80mph while hacking into the police station (National Treasure 2).  I’m talking about the kind where the typical user takes their laptop or PDA on trips.  Mobility is not mobile.  What?   Check any coffee shop or airport.  The user is not moving; just sitting.  And with typical battery life not reaching a full days work.  You are going to need to plug into the outlet soon.

Another reason for WLAN is easy connections.  Yeah right.  I’ve seen two antenna 1 foot apart and still not make a connection.  Why is it WLAN is more art than science?  As far as easy connections go, you don’t have to run cable.  Only on the smallest of WLANs.

Now for the twist.  My local ISP is Muhlenberg Online and they use a giant form of WLAN to connect their clients.  Here at work we have an antenna pointed at the courthouse.  The courthouse then uses a backhaul antenna to transmit to the next city where Muhlenberg Online is located.  That’s right, completly stationary buildings using wireless transmission.  While inside the building, the users are connected by CAT5e cable.

Now it would have been finacially prohibitive to run cable from one city to the next.   So wireless worked out great.

Wireless inside a builing is a big if.  If the building as an open layout (large open areas).  If you don’t want to connect between floors.  Wireless specifications are very overrated.  That’s why Earthlink pulled out building a huge city wide WLAN.

WXPNews has an article about the Digital Divide of broadband. The editor always asks for comments so I responed with this.

It must be silly for a consultant to be using dial-up; it is how I control my costs.

I bought this Philips active noise canceling headphones today at Wal-Mart. The information on the back says no R03/AAA battery included.

Back of packaging

Back when I was a kid, batteries were never included; just a fact of life. As an adult, its uncommon to find any product that does not include some cheap batteries. This is not a deciding factor in my purchases though.

When I opended the box, lo and behold, a Philips AAA battery. YES! The battery is a LR03 AAA. Apparently somebody was getting technical with the grammar.

Battery included with headset

Well after using a large diesel mower I can truthfully say the headphones work! The noise cancellation is not complete, but I’m able to hear low as well as high end sounds.

My old UMAX PowerLook 1000 flatbed scanner’s power supply was damaged by when the Feburary tornando hit. I got a replacement last week from Digi Key. Now the scans show a bright yellow tint to every image. It’s not the power supply’s fault. I tried another one from another PowerLook 1000.

If you own a UMAX flatbed scanner, then you know how lousy support is. UMAX’s website looks like it was pieced together with different philosophies on design. If I ever find out how to fix this, then I’ll post it.