Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers

On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Jay Holovacs wrote:

> Commercial satallites have land based corporate owners. Remember the
> success that Alabama had a few years ago pulling the plug on a New York
> based softporn tv satellite distribution system. They simply went after the
> assets of the satellite companies and got quick cooperation.

About ten years ago a group I was involved with were thinking about
putting something into space as a publicity stunt. One company we talked
to claimed they could put 1 kg into orbit on one of their sounding rockets
for about $ 30,000 (that's a 1 kg satellite, not $ 30,000 per kg). How
small can you build a "data haven" satellite ? 

Looking a few years into the future, you could probably stick a
stripped-down Linux laptop with solar cells and a stripped-down satellite
telephone as a Net link on top of a slightly larger rocket and charge for
on-orbit storage using ecash... Using remailers it should be pretty-much
untraceable. 

	Mark

On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Mark Grant, M.A. (Oxon) wrote:

> About ten years ago a group I was involved with were thinking about
> putting something into space as a publicity stunt. One company we talked
> to claimed they could put 1 kg into orbit on one of their sounding rockets
> for about $ 30,000 (that's a 1 kg satellite, not $ 30,000 per kg). How

Hey! I've just had an epiphany. HOToL promised much cheaper costs to put 
things in LEO. The initial design was finished and tested, but nobody 
would provide the funds for the second round or implementation (probably 
because it wasn't French enough :) 

Nowdays, anything involving the Internet automatically gets ridiculous 
levels of funding. If we can just get John Markoff or Walter Mossberg to 
declare HOTol to be an Internet Technology they'll be able to use 
banknotes as heat shields.

Simon Spero, BSc. Eng, ACGI

{Ok, this whole thread is noise - I'm up to my eyeballs doing PKCS in 
 java, and I canna take no more :)}