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The Wifi Slugfest Over Portland's PGE Park
tomwhore writes "Portland's community wireless networking group, Personal Telco Project (PTP), recently knocked one into the ball park with a new WiFi node. The new node covers the area around and inside of Portland's PGE Ballpark. While free internet access would be welcome by most, PGE Park managers are not happy. They recently cut a deal giving Comcast exclusive rights to do up their networking. 'This is our stadium, and we run the communications for it,' said Chris Metz, a PGE Park spokesman. To find out more about the impact of the PTPs latest home run check out this article in the Oregonian and over at the PTP's website." Let's hope the park also puts a Faraday cage around the whole park to ensure radio silence.
all this wireless internet business is overrated, so few people take advantage of it, look at the numbers from starbucks or McDs
The first step to the FCC stepping in and regulating Wi-Fi has just been taken. Coperate Amerika must ensure it controls the comunication networks.
Str8Dog
using System.Darkside; public
This is great!
I imagine that this is not actually related to comcast, as the article implies, but rather to the fact that portland is currently trying to get a major league team into the stadium.
The reason I think this might be a problem, is that major league teams have been shying away from portland because of its reputation as a place with high taxes and ultra-left wing views. Major league baseball is just another huge corporate entity, and these kinds of tweaks are exactly what they are afraid of. The portland city government, and pge park don't want the perception that they are out of control, as it will negatively impact MLB's view of Portland.
So I say- GO For it free wireless guys! I don't want to see my taxes raised again for a useless baseball team. Especially when unemployment is almost 10% and our taxes are increasing already!
Cuchullain
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
This is kinda like saying "You can only operate our walkie talkies inside our ballpark." Owning the land does not, and should not, give you the exclusive right to say other people can't broadcast their own radio signals from outside the area. WiFi base stations are FCC certified devices and are not specifically limited by where they can (or can't) operate as long as they dont interfere with other devices.
Would the ballpark try to claim that these "rogue" signals are interfering with their own signal? I get 7 wireless connections from my house at any given time, and only 1 is mine. Even if this were to be taken to court, the courts would never be able to say that signals can't overlap.
We have become such slaves to the dollar that the very specter of affront to a sponsor or corporate backer is reason enough to go after a free, community-driven service.
This isn't about Comcast; this isn't about PGE Park's management. Rather, they're just placeholders for the larger problem. This is about the slow, gentle, comfortable erosion of American values--not the God, family, and apple pie values of tradition, but independence, community, and the common good values of the human spirit.
This is not liberty. This is not happiness. This is voluntary bondage to the almighty dollar. I'm not one to get all uppity about this kind of thing--I'm generally pretty laissez-faire--but it's sad to see this kind of thing. Why, oh why, does my country care more about a dollar than anything else?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
slow news day
really, this is about some PHB getting his undies in a knot without really understanding the problem. Comcast apparently didn't complain and really doesn't even give a shit.
"I just don't want to step on anyone's toes," Metz said.
Oohh! Stop the presses!!
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I believe they do. It's their site, they can make the rules. Movie theatres throw people out that use cell phones, and they don't allow people with video cameras in. Their site, their rules. Hell, most ballparks won't even let you bring food or drink into them.
it's an article about a baseball park - "slugfest" is a totally appropriate term - there about 100 years of newspaper subeditors writing headlines with these sorts of punish content - why should electronic media be any different?
and yes this is some sort of device, there are signs saying that cellphone signals are blocked all over the hospital.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I'm sorry but the morons that run PGE Park are idiots.
And besides, the city of Portland owns the Park and the group that runs the stadium for the city owes them back rent.
In my mind, since they don't own the stadium, they shouldn't be bitching. It's not like this is going to damage thier hold on the lease. They are doing that without any Wi-Fi signals coming across the fence without Comcast's permission.
Now fast forward to 2003 with WiFi in ball parks. Imagine not one spotter but 10, or 20, or 30 spotters scattered around the stands all with a laptop and all simultaneously keying in the catcher's signs.
As opposed to what happened to Stallings, I don't think this is cheating. I think anybody who can hit a 90+MPH fast ball deserves to use any means necessary to accomplish this. At least with a WiFi network the visiting team could also place some spotters in the stand.
First off, PGE is owned by Enron. Portland wants to buy it, but Enron wants to dissect it and sell the assets to pay off debts, and have rate-payers help with the debt. OK, not exactly, but something like that. Second, nobody wants to own PGE Park. It's not profitable. Our weeklies usually have a least one article a month about some poor, old, rich bastard who can't pay the City of Portland for rent. Third, PGE Park lost power not too long ago. This is the park with Portland General Electric in the name! They can't even keep their own power on! Blocking Wi-Fi? It's probably science fiction to them. I agree with a previous poster, this is no slugfest. This is a bloated 600-pound gorilla complaining about someone else's scent covering their foul odor... BTW, Portland itself kicks major yahoo.
This could actually become a very messy issue.
Assuming very low contention, you can videocast over an 802.11b link. Some guy brings in his shiny new Sony VAIO PCG-TR1A with built-in camera and 802.11b, and starts broadcasting the game from his seat in the stadium. (Yeah, it'll suck, but that won't matter, as we shall shortly see.)
This will piss off a number of people:
They've built for themselves a cozy little relationship that doesn't involve competition or, indeed, people thinking for themselves at all (sit down, shut up, buy the $6.50 hot dogs, oh, and enjoy the game). Expect shrill whining from Entrenched Interests the moment they even suspect anything like this might happen.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Um, no.
You can't *declaratively* limit a legal broadcast originating from off your private property from entering it.
You can, of course, devise technical means of preventing it within your property -- for example, jamming cell phone signals at a movie theater, or the hyperbole-laden Faraday's Cage suggestion.
I'm not sure this has been 100% verified legally -- I could see someone *arguing* that they should be entitled to receive cellular calls anywhere they would normally be able to receive them, but not *winning*, however.
I suppose they could try to get the law (or FCC regulations) changed to limit WiFi hotspots, but there's certainly no such limits in place right now.
And, strictly legal issues aside, global acccess with limited denial seems to be the only sensible way to go about it.
The fact that Comcast ponied up sponsorship in exchange for something 'exclusive' is a matter between them and the stadium. They BOTH should have realized that there's no automatic way to guarantee that exclusivity when it can be superseded by forces beyond their control. You could listen to an FM radio station inside the stadium even if they had a 'stadium station' transmitting locally; access to external WiFi concurrent with specifically-provided on-site access is little different, at the end of the day.
It's not QUITE the same, but you can select among multiple available hotspots just like you can tune to different stations. There's a potential conflict if outside and local both want to use the same frequency, but that's orthagonal to the situation here, IMHO.
When hotspot ranges/capacities are very small, it's a whitelist problem -- you select where to HAVE access. With higher ranges and capacities, you start having to look at like a blacklist problem, choosing where to NOT allow access and not worry about everywhere else.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Probably the guy with the Videocamera and the P2P connection. I figure that may be what the ballpark is really worried about. A corporate ISP can be told to crack down on illegal prodcasts, but I'm not so sure they would trust PTP to. Or maybe it's just typical management fear of loss of control.
However, a ~real~ baseball fan would bring a wireless-equipped PDA to look up statistics and stuff, so she can tell her friends, "That's the fifth home run Jose Canseco has hit since he's gotten out of jail!".
from here, you're allowed 30dBm of transmit power with a 6 dBi antennae (isotropic) for 802.11b. If they're broadcasting more power than that into the stadium, they're breaking the rules. Given the normal range of 802.11, I doubt they can broadcast into the stadium legally, even if they use a directional antennae to improve efficiency.
Vote for Pedro
Actually, I've used my Palm Pilot at Pac Bell Park for Giants games. They [used to?] let you download a little applet that had todays roster and some basic stats.
For a baseball fan that usually hates buying a [paper] program for that information, it was kind of cool.
Can also be used to get real-time updated scores from other games relevant to the penant chase, etc.
Not to mention a lot of times I was at the game with business clients (expensing the whole time), and may have needed to follow up on an email or something. Sometimes making a business phonecall at a ballgame isn't quite appropriate.
--D
Then I could get my front page to contain all articles above 5 and below -4 (Article moderations should be wider than normal post moderations). Of course then we can see which slashdot editors have the best success at posting highly moderated articles
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Not exactly. Los Angeles County considered charging property tax on certain satillites, as "movable property," because the satellites were owned by companies located in LA County.
Besides, as someone else pointed out, geostationary satellites must orbit "over" the equator.
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
If they ever make it so that people can sue others for putting radiowaves through through their property then I'm going to be suing all the cell phone companies, satilite compnaies, etc. I'll let them put their radio waves through my property but only if they give me free access to them. I think I should get some right of way fee. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.