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The Revenge of the router....


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The gadget that makes laptops wireless may not be so innocent after all, writes Danny Katz........

It all started with a new computer - a laptop computer. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, because I thought maybe if I worked in different parts of the house, it might be good for my writing.

Maybe if I worked on the livingroom couch, my sentences might become more relaxed. And maybe if I worked at the diningroom table, my grammar might become more formal. And maybe if I worked in the laundry room beside the washing powders, my jokes might become less dirty, a lot brighter and packed with super-concentrated stain-busting enzymes.

Anyway, when I bought this new laptop from the computer shop, the salesman also convinced me to go wireless. He said wireless was an amazing new technology that allowed computers to stay connected to the internet without the need for wires or cables or anything. I said, "You mean, like the wireless that my grandparents used to listen to in the 1930s and '40s?", and he said, "Yeah ... pretty much the same amazing new technology".

He sold me a little device called a wireless router that I brought home and installed using my considerable computer savvy and technical skill - I took it out of its box, I stared at it for half-an-hour, I put it back in its box, then I called a computer expert called Chris, who charges idiots like me $80 an hour to come over and plug things into power points.

Finally my router was up and working, and I have to say it was a pretty cute little thing perched there on my desk. It had a little blue case, and a row of green flashing lights, and two adorable little antennae poking out the top - it looked a bit like Ray Walston in My Favourite Martian, only funnier.

And it worked beautifully. I could take my laptop anywhere in the house and still be online. I could do my emailing next to the mailbox, I could do some logging-on inside the toilet. I even tried a bit of Yahooing in the bedroom, until my beloved told me to stop Yahooing because she was trying to sleep, so I just had to Google to myself quietly.

Yes, this was great. I HAD ENTERED THE GLORIOUS WIRELESS FUTURE, JUST LIKE MY GRANDPARENTS BEFORE ME, AND I WAS LOVING IT... until three days later, when my world turned upside-down.

I was walking down to the shops to get bread and milk, and I bumped into my neighbour, Beau. He said, "Hey, have you done something to your computer recently?", and I said, "Why, yes, I have, Beau, I've gone wireless!", and he said, "Oh ¿ right ... Well, that explains why I've got access to all your files, your email account, and seems I've been using your broadband service for the past two days".

Turns out, my cute little router wasn't so cute and little - it was a powerful, wave-emitting HIGHFREQUENCY SUBSTATION sending out my personal data to every other wireless computer on the street, and God knows where else - maybe the whole neighbourhood, maybe the entire suburb, MAYBE EVERYWHERE WITHIN MELWAY PAGES 68 AND 69.

A terrible wave of paranoia swept over me - I didn't know who had seen what, who was looking in. I passed the old guy who lived on the corner and he gave me a funny nod, as if to say, "I saw the column you were writing this morning ... Oh well, they can't all be gems". The Sri Lankan guy at my 7-Eleven gave me a sly little smirk, as if to say, "Don't worry, Danny, I've searched the net, too - there is no website dedicated to Mary Kostakidis in a rubber fish suit".

And then on the way home, an even greater terror occurred to me: if this little router was powerful enough to broadcast my files to the entire City of Glen Eira, WHAT WERE THOSE RADIO WAVES DOING TO MY BODY?

Suddenly I felt sluggish . . . nauseous ... infertile ... Yes, this router was probably microwaving me like a chicken fillet for two minutes on defrost.

I hurried home and rushed straight to the router. It didn't look like Ray Walston any more - it looked like those evil humanzapping robots in War of the Worlds, and I was Tom Cruise . . . but a taller Tom Cruise, and slightly less loathsome.

THIS ROUTER WAS TOTALLY ROUTED, so I unplugged it from the power point, and now I've decided to just use my laptop the old-fashioned way, with wires and cables and everything.

And, incidentally, I wrote this entire story in the kitchen, next to the juicer. I was hoping it would make my writing more zesty and apple-fresh, but it seems to have turned out as pithy as ever...

source:melbourne age

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It had a little blue case, and a row of green flashing lights, and two adorable little antennae poking out the top

it sounds like it's a linksys (the one we got is a pieceashit). :mad:

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same here dude, it's fine for me but when chris gets home he's always dropping off (wireless).

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