Re: Nocat List

I think this is my first post in...  5 years...  And, basically, its 
to say thanks to Rob.

Still have the inbox - don't have a T-shirt (Darn!  T-shirts...  Who knew...!)

We ALMOST were able to deploy NoCat throughout the Health Sciences 
complex at the University of Washington back in the year 
2002?  2003?  I forget, but it was a long time ago.   I think we had 
a version of it working with our campus-wide, cookie-based 
authentication system, and we gave a talk to the Campus Technology 
group, with that vision of a broad deployment.

It was well received. Then, they crushed us like bugs.

Still it was a great diversion from informatics research, and solved 
a real problem for us. (One year we went on the road, and set up a 
non-authenticating, anonymous, portal at a national conference, both 
to share the hotel's Internet access, and because we could...)

Now, of course, central campus computing provides excellent 
authenticated wireless virtually campus-wide, including the medical 
center and health sciences.  Life goes on.

Thanks,

Bill
--------
Bill Lober, MD
Associate Professor
Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health
University of Washington


At 09:29 PM 2/17/2009, Sameer Verma wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Rob Flickenger <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Sameer Verma wrote:
> >> NoCat seems like it was so long ago. I had no gray hair and could pull
> >> an all-nighter.
> > The first alpha of NoCatAuth was released on 12-Jul-2001. At the time,
> > we didn't know of any other open source portal implementation. Schuyler
> > became motivated at OSCon that year to put something together when I
> > threatened to write some (likely very dodgy) perl code myself. Back
> > then, "WiFi" didn't yet exist and the only practical way to get wireless
> > into a laptop was to use a Lucent card.
> >
> > It has been a fascinating 7.5 years. I have developed my own grey hair
> > since then (falling off the roof in 2002 didn't help with that ;) I've
> > written or edited more than a dozen books since then. My interest in the
> > code has long since died, given the availability of much more capable
> > and active projects like WiFiDog and Chillispot.
> >
> > I now spend a lot of my time teaching long-distance wireless techniques
> > (including Pringles cans!) to folks from the developing world. A lot of
> > that is documented in Wireless Networking in the Developing World
> > (http://wndw.net/).
> >
> > This list is still here out of sheer habit. It currently has 755 members.
> >
> > Wow.
> >
> > We'll probably keep the light on until this list server falls over.
> >
> > Thank you all for your support and well wishes over the years!
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > --Rob
> >
>
>I *still* have a nocat folder in my inbox. I have a nocat t-shirt as well.
>
>I remember when Rob fell off the roof trying to install an antenna
>(can based waveguide, iirc) and ruptured a kidney. Everyone on the
>list was "Don't die...finish the code first!" Just kidding :-) I am
>glad you made it and its always good to hear from you.
>
>A lot of what I gleaned from nocat is still with me and I'm able to
>use it in my current project/obsession: One Laptop Per Child
>
>Thanks, and keep the light on!
>
>cheers,
>Sameer
>--
>Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor of Information Systems
>San Francisco State University
>San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>
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