Slashdot Mirror
Baltimore Inner Harbor To Go Wireless
An anonymous reader writes "The City of Baltimore has made free wireless internet available in the Inner Harbor in hopes of bringing in more tourists and business conventions. According to this article on Sunspot Internet service will be available free of charge to portable computers from the Baltimore Science Center to the World Trade Center along the touristy waterfront. Need to check your e-mail when sailing the Chesapeake Bay? Just dock at the Rusty Scupper and whip out your laptop."
Warsailing here I come... I'll bring a new meaning to piracy on the open seas.
I can't say it's helped draw in business yet, but it's here.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
The homeless in Baltimore already ARE geeks. They're laid off tech workers.
I mean, can you really take a Wi-Fi equipped laptop and download mp3's to your heart's content without being tracked down to your IP? Or launch a DDoS attack anonymously?
Again, I guess you hafta take the good with the bad. I can imagine it won't be long before these wireless providers start paying attention to security on these networks.
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
Every year Otakon holds one of the biggest east coast anime conventions at the Baltimore Convention Center, right on the Inner Harbor. If the WiFi reaches that far, I might be able to wank my inner geek by not only attending a japanese animation convention while wearing a schoolgirl costume with mechanical power-up accessories, but actually posting live cosplay photos back to my website at the same time.
Life is good. Or sad. Or good!
Just in case you're thinking of going out to try this, Baltimore's Inner Harbor is notoriously expensive and you will be paying for access, just not to an ISP.
At most garages, it costs more than $10 to park, the restaurants in that area serve tasty but expensive food, moderately overpriced shopping stores surround consumers, and random Orioles fans, despondent over the team's performance, may accost you at any time in that area.
You would be better served going to Fells Point and playing video poker at any one of the dozens of bars.
Isabel blew much of into the bay.
Seriously, though, B-mo needs to do more than just provide free wireless. Cleaning up the panhandlers, crackheads, pot peddlers and other assorted dirtbags would go along way to revitalizing the district's nightlife.
It's a cool place to go, it's a shame the city's so dirty and crime ridden. Working in the public safety field, and living in the area, I've spoken with lots of b-mo cops, and morale there is so low. They're just so overwhelmed with typical inner city crime that they've become completely apathetic.
Last year when that crack dealer burned down some ladies home (because she supposedly called the cops on him), and killed her and her 5 children, it should have sent a wake-up call, but the b-mo police just hit the snooze button.
Oh well, wireless is pretty cool, but it's not an area that you'd want to sit in the open with your two thousand dollar laptop.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"It's hard enough to compete against other companies. If the city starts providing for free what we make people pay for, it could really hurt us," Dowling said.
This is exactly the kind of attitude that hurts technology and customers. It results in monopolistic companies trying everything possible to stick to the existing model, and try and kill of competition (albeit superior in technology and better for the customer).
Microsoft's been trying to hurt Linux as much as possible, because it's a free alternative to their OS, which could potentially kill them.And ofcourse, our beloved RIAA's been trying to kill away a newer, technologically better solution, rather than trying to innovate and provide alternatives that people would pay for.
The right attitude should be to enhance their product so that customers would be willing to pay them for it, over the other cheaper (or free) alternative. Sheesh.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam