Solipsism Gradient

I’m at the Macmania office in São Paulo, here for a 3-day visit. The #100 issue of the magazine is just coming out, and they’re throwing a party next Thursday. Even though it supposedly will be one of those badly-lit-with-loud-music affairs, it’ll be a chance to meet most of the gang in the flesh – and, of course, some of the cover models will be there… 😛

Speaking of covers, #100 has two covers for the price of one! See them here and here.

I’m also here to finish my chapters of a book about Mac OS X. I wrote most of those months ago, but now, with Jaguar out, everything must be revised.

However, before diving into that I found a must-read link to Richard Thieme’s article Real Hacking Rules!. Simply marvelous. Here are some quotes:

…hacking [is] practice for transplanetary life in the 21st century.

In essence, hacking is a way of thinking about complex systems.

Hacking is knowing how to discern or retrieve information beyond that which is designed for official consumption.

Glenn Fleishman’s 802.11b/Wi-Fi News pointed me at an interesting item about Wi-Fi in Brazil:

Alan Reiter tells how he spent a couple of weeks in Brazil talking about wireless at “Mobile Corporate” conferences. Be sure to read his later entries too.

One of his articles links to Eduardo Prado’s Smart Convergence blog, which I’ll read in more detail later. It seems there are good business opportunities for wireless in Brazil, but with the recent devaluations of the Real, investing in imported technology is tough.

Here in Belo Horizonte, a 2.5 megapeople city, Wi-Fi seems virtually unknown. My favorite networking shop, Deltatronic, has just an access point and a couple of wireless PCMCIA cards from H-Net, and the salesman didn’t know how many they had sold (if any).

I did some wardriving last weekend, using MacStumbler, and couldn’t find a single network. Of course, buildings here are concrete and brick, so there is less chance of leakage… I couldn’t see my own network from the street, even though my access point is mounted on an outside wall.

A company called Pointer (couldn’t find the URL) makes wireless connections available in several Brazilian airports. I tried it out in June at the São Paulo/Guarulhos international airport. Any access is first diverted to a log-in page where you have to give a credit card number. I can’t recall if they mentioned a price, but I didn’t go further