The Well-Connected Park Bench

|proc|meminfo writes: "MSN is bringing internet access to park benches in Bury St. Edmunds, England. The bench (for now) will be in Abbey Gardens, and those with laptops will be able to hook up to recieve free MSN internet access through the bench. MSN says it should be ready for operation in August/September."

Interesting to see Microsoft's approach here -- a park bench on the internet is a good idea. The concept of connecting community centers with computers predates the Net and is going on all around, though; you may find these two academic overviews (here's one, and another) intriguing, especially the mentions of the Berkeley-area Community Memory project. And looking beyond parkbenches, various community networking groups like consume.net are working to decentralize Net access, at least for those living where coverage is available.

Comments

also, now...

[Wakko Warner]

...I will know which park bench to perform my holdups at.

- A.P.

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Re:Need an Interface

[CAIMLAS]

You're forgetting that they'd probably destroy a connection port, too. those sensitive little wires that help your rj45 jack get data to your computer need those to function properly. they're also surprisingly easily damaged. I can't wait to see their workaround for this.

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Caimlas

Re:Hope the bench doesnt do this:

[Speare]

Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01a8'

Maybe the processor wasn't "seated" properly. Causes all sorts of unpredictable errors.

Re:Microsoft?

[doctor_oktagon]

Its probably a tax writeoff, too. They can classify it as a charitable contribution

If you had bothered reading the article you would see this is being installed in the UK.

This means costs are met by Microsoft UK, and not the US-based operation.

Open your eyes next time, or click on the link. Then comment.

Re:All Your Bench Belong To Us

[doctor_oktagon]

The last people that should be given media-access-control over a public access internet point are Microsoft.

If you'd open your mind to the fact other countries & environments exist outside of the USA, you might learn that here in the UK we have something called

day-tah proh-te-ct-shon

This stops evil companies like Microsoft flogging your personal details, and is one of the main differentiators between the EU and the USA.

Re:M$ is behind the curve

[doctor_oktagon]

When I was in England this past June, British telecom had replaced about 5% of their phone booths with free internet stations. It was anice little touchscreen with a very hardcore metal keyboard and trackball.

BT has now installed these all over Victoria in London, and if anyone is passing through Victoria station they should have a look.

It's an excellent design, and it also allows you to send free SMS messages to mobile phones.

I had a quick play, and everything is filtered through WebSense proxy software, but the list of blocked sites was not too restrictive.

I think these are an excellent example of how to encurage non-technical people onto the Internet, and let them play .

theft?

[Alien54]

Given the fact that we read about people even trying to steal full sized ATM machines out of banks, grocery stores, etc. pulling them away with pickup trucks, etc. - what is to stop someone from just trying to drag the bench away?

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Re:theft?

[nakaduct]

[but people steal ATM machines!]

Maybe the article didn't make this clear, but the bench is not filled with money.

You can buy a wireless phone for, umm... nothing. Stealing one from the middle of a half-ton of concrete sounds like a lot of effort to me.

Hope the bench doesnt do this:

[ConsumedByTV]

When visting the page for the story:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01a8'

Object required: 'Std__olutSection'

/m/inc/std.inc, line 150


The irony eh?


The Lottery:

MSN?

[s20451]

How awful! This further promotes the evil monopoly of Microsoft. Someone should develop an Open Source park bench. And so on.

Re:MSN?

[FatOldGoth]

Someone should develop an Open Source park bench.

Yeah! Then we could compare the performance of the two through a series of benchmarks.

Sorry. Couldn't resist. I'll go quietly.

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This will come in very useful...

[saihung]

Glad to see that MS is trying to retain the loyalties of the great mass of newly-unemployed IT workers who no doubt will soon be living on these in addition to accessing the net from them. It'll be like having my DSL back!

Hate to nitpick

[Zach]

Interesting to see Microsoft's approach here -- a park bench on the internet is a good idea.

Isn't it vice versa - the internet on a park bench? I believe so :)

This is getting out of hand.

[empesey]

Do we really need to have this much connectivity? Soon we're going to have 12 step programs for internet junkies and people getting mugged for their bandwidth.

Hi, my name is smith@parkbench.com and I'm an internet junkie. I've been broadband free for 3 weeks.

Hello smith@parkbench.com.



--
Entropy ain't just a good idea. It's the law.

Connected how?

[Guppy06]

Sounds like a great application for IP over avian carriers to me!

WRONG SEAT!

[neema]

But how come no one makes the seat that everyone loves internet accessible? I'd be on the toilet and on the internet a whole lot more then on a bench.

if the MSN logo is on the seat...

[npongratz]

... Microsoft can finally (literally) kiss my ass.