axh@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I am old enough and geek enough to be bothered by the use of the word “WiFi” instead of the Internet or just network.
It’s only WiFi if you connect the wireless router at the end.
WiFi is a specific protocol, IEEE 802.11 (with a lower case letter at the end for the version). There have long been hobbyist and commercial methods for using it with point-to-point links. There are some other wireless methods for this, like LoRa/Meshtastc, but they tend to be slower and less developed. Everyone prefers using WiFi.
So, yes, they are using WiFi in a point-to-point way. The antenna is directional to give it (potentially) several miles of range.
Usually a dish these days rather than waveguide, but yes.
Setup some multi km Wi-Fi bridges before, that was fun.
It would seem a lot of people think Wi-Fi is internet. I’ve heard someone call it “Wi-Fi with exclamation mark” when without internet access.
My eldest when her internet want working confidently told me her computer couldn’t connect to the globe
🤦
Language is so weird these days…
Everything is “app” nowaways
A .exe install on windows is “app”
A reddit account is “app”
Buying a phone plan and inserting a sim card into a phone is “activation” of a phone
Lol
Its a windows program or software
Reddit is not an “app”, its a platform.
You’re not “activating” your phone, your phone is already usable, all you did was purchase a voice/data plan and inserted a sim card. “Activation” is a apple internet lock thing, totally separate.
You don’t know what the word “application” is lol
I noticed the gradual shift from program to app over time since the iPhone took the world by storm, but then again it was never incorrect. Applications are synonymous with programs so an executable on your windows desktop is an app as much as it is a program.
I’ve never come across anyone referring to a Reddit account as an app but I can definitely see someone who interacts with Reddit exclusively using the Reddit app referring to both the platform and a means of accessing as the same thing both out of a conscious choice for convenience or ignorance and actually they’d be right either way except in the latter case only accidentally since it you say “I really love using that app Reddit to look at memes and talk to people” despite not actually knowing the app isn’t the platform, your sentence would still be correct.
The activating thing, I jimmycrackcrack declare that I will allow it. Look it’s a sneaky hardware manufacturer and provider term to imply the device doesn’t work until you give them money but then, as a piece of language with utility, well… your phone doesn’t work without a sim, at least in the common understanding of what “work” means here. Since a phone of any stripe, dumb or smart is pretty useless without a sim card, getting that message across to consumers that you have to do something to make it functional, to “activate” it is necessary. You could choose to frame it as unlocking but then again if you’re selling these things you probably don’t want people thinking you locked them up and then sold them the keys and in fact, the manufacturers kinda didn’t, it’s the service provider that doesn’t provide service to a functioning device until they’re given money, who are doing that and given they’re a business, that’s sorta how they have to operate.
For a municipal wireless network, I’m not too bothered with how OP describes it if it’s accessed through Wi-Fi.
Thank you, because it’s vitally important to devote half of these threads to arguing about the terminology in the headline.
But… It is P2P WiFi…
Chivera@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Same here and when people refer to the PC tower as the CPU
Hawke@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That I cut a bit of slack for, because prior to the minicomputer let alone the microcomputer, the CPU would likely have been a large component like the whole system is for a desktop PC.