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Coming Soon to a Wireless Hotspot Near You: Ads
mindless4210 writes "A new generation of spam is born with the launch of FreeFi's new Wi-Fi advertising network. It is the first service of its kind, with intentions of delivering ad content to hotspots around the world starting in mid-Summer. FreeFi's President, Lawrence Laffer, says that the service displays a 'persistent set of ads adjacent to the user's browser without use of invasive advertising software or pop-up ads.' He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'" This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
Good... stay off the free service and leave bandwidth for those of us who have the amazing innate ability to ignore ads. Hosting these free hotspots costs money (as does slashdot). They need to recoup their costs or they will go bye-bye. Who f'en cares if there's a little bit of your screen taken up with ads that will be easily ignored (at least by the majority of us not included in your minority)?
It's a good thing you run a website free of ads. Oh... wait... shoot. Now, why again do you have ads? Oh... that's right, to pay for shit.
Casual Games/Downloads
Any kind of popups are invasive.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
If I could rig my free hotspot AP to show Google ads...
reminds me of good 'ol /. with the ad-banner down the side
www.necroticobsession.com
I was going to say this same thing, thanks for saving me the time.
In other news, television, magazines, radio stations, newspapers, taxi cabs, and sporting events may soon have to turn to advertising to help cover costs.
Wifi is a medium which requires cooperation to work, so if enough people object to this, they can actually do something about the commercials. Drown the ads ... ... or just offer free access to your AP.
Isn't this the same exact thing that NetZero (and Juno and others) have tried in the past with dial-up? Are any of them still offering free access?
This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
Yep, the majority of us will just find a way around it. I kinda doubt they'll be putting ads next to my lynx window.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Submitter: He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'"
CowboyNeil: This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
Actually, Mr. Cowboy, you just validated their business plan.
While the idea of free wireless Internet access is fun for the user, there's still the annoying fact that someone's paying for your bandwidth. Ideally, geeks like us would be more than happy to open their broadband connections to the world -- I would, if I could get broadband in rural east Texas.
Unfortunately, there aren't enough altruistic geeks per square mile to sustain that "business model". So someone has to pay the bill. Why not advertisers?
I run Opera, but I'm too cheap to pay for it. So I have a banner ad built into my browser. I even click it sometimes -- out of curiosity, or to send Opera some ad clicks. I'm willing to put up with advertising to get the product, and lucky for me, the model is working.
I hope ad-supported wireless access takes off. I wouldn't put my money in the companies, though... anyone remember Bluelight?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Maybe you can run it inside Vmware, and have your "real" OS route through the virtual machine. Or the crossover guys could make a hacked WINE just for running this client and network interface.
No thanks. I don't have windows on this laptop any longer for a REASON, bubb.
For each Netzero customer you need a phone line and a modem. With this, one AP with one net connection can serve many people.
And it failed too, remember free dialup? Free internet access for looking at ads. Where did they all go? Out of business.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Sure the ad system isn't the best but it's functional and beats having to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy a pack of $20 ciggarettes in a Socialist/Communist society.
You can't have your cake and eat it too I'm afraid.
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
I kept looking for how it actual works but didn't see anything. Maybe I just don't have much Wi-Fi experience. Are the ads forced through the browser? Does a custom piece of software need to run first? I'm not quite sure how the ads are going to get onto my computer screen.
Someone will write an application/patch/work-around that deactivates their ads without effecting the service. Those in the know will use it. Those not smart enough, or not clued in won't. This is how it always is. The application/patch/work-around will be brought up here of course. It always is.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
...this guy is really named LARRY LAFFER?
But, Netzero, Juno and others got themselves a customer base from offering free then converted to pay. They turned many of those customers to pay customers. Same thing could be applied here.
It's like drung dealing. First you get them addicted then you start charging.
Evolution or ID?
This reminds me of an old points programme (emphasis on the "mme") that paid people to surf with ads on their machines..... Now: My poll question: What is more acceptable: Ads a) on top or below your surfing/working window or b) to the left or right? My vote is for the right side, as we normally read from left to right, and the ads are discarded by (my) brain as superflouous. Comments? Opinions?
BTW, I only ask this and entertain the notion because like it or not, ads are going to be a part of the hotspot experience.... why not do it right from the beginning?
I will not run foreign code on my computer and nobody else should either. This is just a stepping stone to security vulerabilities that we should be trying to squash, not needlessly encourage.
A computer should be a tight ship. Not a leaky dingy like Microsoft Windows. They have independently spawed a whole category of spyware and malware that's automatically downloaded and executed through the web browser. Need we say more?
I wonder how long it will take before someone develops a program that kills the ads or hides their windows?
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Larry Laffer, I guess he got out of the pimps and hoes business and retired the leasure suit.
Would you like to super-size your Wifi today? It's free!
Lawrence Laffer? Now don't tell me his nickname is Larry ...
Or am I the only one here remembering Al Lowe's character?
"I shouldn't have let you guys have all that money. Biggest mistake I made" - Ross Perot
I think I could live with the ads if it was definately a free service. The thing that scares me about this is that eventually we'll start seeing services that make you pay AND cram ads down your throat. (see Cable TV)
Also, it depends on what kind of software they make you install to see the ads / access the network. I'm assuming that they'll have to use something because if it's just a proxy I think it would be to easy too defeat. If they make you install special software, is it going to be Windows only?
I don't have enough details to make judgment yet.
I'd much rather the hotspot be funded by charging an extra $0.10 for coffee, or whatever the business may be. Actually, I just set up a WiFi hotspot for a local coffeehouse and the "free" WiFi has brought him enough extra business that he feels quite justified in not charging extra for the service.
WiFi should be a condiment, like catsup or salt or paper napkins...
This will require software to be installed on the client's computer in order to display the ads besides the browser, I assume.
Does that mean that there is a 99.99% chance that this software won't install on linux (or Mac) and only windows laptops will be able to access those spots?
Isn't there a better way to do this that doesn't require software installation? like injecting HTML code for banner ads in the pages viewed by users on your network like free hosting companies were doing all the time back in the days?
Does that also mean that there will be no way to tell if there is malicious (or even vulnerable) code bundled with the software?
...they've found that the reason people don't mind ads other than pop-ups is that they don't notice them.
Oops, so much for that business model.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I have a feeling that what people don't mind is context relevant ads.
I, for one, do not like ads that are irrelevant, even if they are along side the browser. Especially if the ads are animated, and loops endlessly.
What about you?
Hey, that's my password you are typing
"As of 2003, there were almost 10,000 Wi-Fi Hotspots in the U.S. alone" says Lawrence Laffer, President of FreeFi Networks.""
Laffer? Larry Laffer? Ditched the Leisure Suit for a business suit I see.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Lawrence Laffer? Larry Laffer?! Is this guy Leisure Suit Larry? No wonder he's trying to make more money from ads - he's still trying to get that hooker!
Huxley
If the free wireless internet access is funded via advertisements, then those ads are not spam. Television ads are not spam; spam is widespread and unsolicited advertisement.
This is not to say that advertising is not often irritating and intrusive, but beggars can not be browsers without being subjected to ads.
Of course, they could very well be monitoring and recording what you are doing online, above and beyond simple browsing information, in the name of 'targeted marketing'. But that is for the tin foil crowd to determine; I do not have a laptop, let alone use wireless access in public locations, so I am not too concerned about the privacy implications, 'First they came for the WiFiers' be damned.
While this whole thing sounds just great on paper, I truly think it will suffer the exact same fate as NetZero --- placing ads simply does not bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of such a service and to break even, let alone to make a profit.
I'll bet that after a year or two, they'll start charging money, somehow.
I looked at the site. It allows a location to be a fre or reduced cost hot spot. The service is free or a reduced cost to the location, but is the reduced cost passed one?
Fight Spammers!
The smart will block it, people who don't know better will tolerate it. What is the big fucking deal? And yes, author, you are in the minority. Too bad there's not a RELEVANCE TO MY LIFE threshold.
last I tried, wifi supported other protocols like ftp, ssh, etc. are they going to block those and only allow http?
obviously they're injecting the adds into the http stream.
I'll just ssh to work and tunnel to my proxy server...
Granted high speed has more value to it than POTS dialup, but is this company really going to be able to compete? Several states are starting to consider WiFi as a viable public utility that they provide for "free" using the Tax Base. Benefit to the people is seamless wireless access without ads. Benefit to the state is reliable high speed access for public safety and services such as fire, police, EMS, etc.. Plus, once they ensure that everyone is online, they can begin reducing costs by allowing a great deal of government red tape to be handled electronically. (i.e. paying speeding tickets or applying for building permits)
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Leisure Suit Larry - Wasn't his name Larry Laffer. (Larry / Lawrence)
I always wondered what happened to old Larry - thought he died of an STD or something. Turns out he's running a wireless hotspot startup. Who would have thunk it?
Do you suppose you can block these ads by spoofing your local host table via:
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/
?
Yeah, that ad thing'll work really well on my Clie UX50.
The PDA Nazi
I have to wonder sometimes how successful banners really are. I used to work at a TV station that had banners on it's web site, and the numbers were pretty dismal. Granted, maybe that's changed since then, but I'd love to see a study done as to the effectiveness of banner ads (I'm sure someone's already done one - I just don't know where to look for it).
Just means that we all went from being "users of a free service who are not entitled to tech support/guaranteed bandwidth/troubleshooting/etc..." to customers who are.
Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.c om/ s &file=article&sid=240 is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_304/www.dailywirele ss.com/modules.php%3fname=News&%3bfile=article& amp%3bsid=240 c om/id13.html
The mirror of http://www.freefinet.com/ is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_304/www.freefinet.
The mirror of http://www.dailywireless.com/modules.php?name=New
The mirror of http://www.freefinet.com/id13.html is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_304/www.freefinet.
market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.
Furthermore, market research* indicates that people really don't mind anal probes.
-kgj
*Market research conducted by Kang and Kodos. All test subjects consented voluntarily to mind-control ray and anal probe. No human species were exterminated during this course of this research. Earth void where prohibited.
-kgj
It's cool, it's FREE, supported by nonintrusive ads on the side of your Web browser, and it's likely fast, too.
... cry me a river.
And all a significant portion of the Slashdot crowd can think to do is whine about it being "probably closed source" and "probably Windows" and you don't know if it's secure or not
You want to use it, cool. Don't do anything that you wouldn't want published in the NY Times. Do that stuff at home.
If you want your Open Source and your Linux and your guarantees that it's free, well, open up your own business and give away YOUR bandwidth.
And quit whining, dammit. Geesh. Use it or don't.
Hmm, did you mean dung dealing? I thought monkeys were the only ones who did that. And, BTW, I don't really find dung dealing to be very appealing. There may be some weirdos out there who like it. But I don't think I'd get addicted to it.
That is, I might get addicted, nay, even willing to pay if the dung dealing was occurring to people whom I loathe. For example, Darl McBride. I'm sure lots of other people would too.
Long ago I took up updating my hosts file with data from http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ which provides a list of known ad servers that you then point back to your local machine.
I decided to take this one step further and change the mapped to IP to be that of SCO, so that each time I come to Slashdot and don't see their ads, I instead see a small bit of the SCO homepage, what you might call a mini DoS
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
> Someone will write an application/patch/work-around
> that deactivates their ads without effecting the service.
Look, all you have to do is put duck tape over the area where their annoying ads pop up. Sure you'll lose some screen space, but without all that distraction you'll actually get some work done. Duck tape rules!
So what is to happen to the use of handheld computers whose browsers are already hugely limited by screen size? I'd hate to have to use a computer on which literally half of the screen was consumed by advertisements. Still not too bad of a deal for laptop users though. But one would have to be on crack to tolerate that on a CE machine.
A site which used to be completely free, funded by ads, and is still mostly free and mostly funded by ads, and an editor of said site criticizing another free, ad-funded service because he doesn't like ads. I guess he's lucky not everybody has the same opinion, or else he'd have to find another job.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Wait, Larry Laffer is choosing the ads for us? I hope they have a PG version.
I don't see anything wrong with this at all... if there's a free hotspot somewhere, and the owner puts ads on it, it's not like you're forced to use it.
It's *FREE*...
If you don't like it, PAY for a hotspot that doesn't have ads. What's wrong with that?
When you look at it, whats the cost for a small coffe chop of restaurant to offer free wireless in their place? Maybe $50-70 a month for broadband, then slap in a Linksys wireless router for $100, then maybe figure out how to lock the thing down a little.
/. for hours on end in a nice environment.
Let the customers know that this is a free and open network, and that you're not responsible to what happens to their machines, and thats about it.
Its been my experience that people will go to a place to pay 10 times over cost for a cup of coffee spedifically because they can boot up and be online without having to goof with their settings too much. Like these folks, I will even spend a little more just staying there a little longer because I can sit and read
10 people a week spend an extra $2.50 a visit because of the wireless and you get $25. 4.2 weeks in the average month adds up to $105.
Bingo. WiFi cost recovered.
This doesn't even take into account the Evercrack geeks that will sit there for hours on end mainlining shot after shot of espresso into themselves for that extra twitch speed while playing.
This is just yet another attempt at a useless industry trying to insert themselves into a place where they're not wanted or needed.
Hey Marketers, fuck you. We're not going to buy your shit no matter how many times you put it in front of us.
s'wut i sed.
I'm sure that ten minutes after the service is offered there will be a utility to block the ads like AdShield does in most browser ads today.
I've stayed at a hotel (C??rty?rd) which, on top of $10/day for Internet access, has proxies configured to hijack requests for Amazon. If you try to buy something through their connection, they rewrite the headers to get the referral credit. This should be illegal... I noticed because at the time I stayed, their code was a little broken, at least with Moz/Linux, but it was clear from the error message what they were attempting. I just used an SSH tunnel through one of my systems for the rest of my browsing... but I'm sure they made some nice bucks from the victim class (MS/IE users).
I for one am the owner of a Pocket PC with a built-in WiFi chipset, and I don't like the idea of mandatory ads obscuring half of my device's tiny screen. I might not even be able to use the service at all if it requires software to be installed (probably Windows only, and/or resource hogging.)
This comment was thought up very late at night and does not necessarily reflect my views at a more reasonable hour.
There's no need for that tone.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
People stop worrying, the ads can easily be defeated and if you cant be bothered to write a filter-rule for it, someone will be making some nice "QwikBar" blocking plug-ins. This business model is aimed at Internet Explorer users only. I love the little "Closing this window disconnects FreeFi" caption on the top of the explorer window, and the name is just brilliant! Combining two words into one with capitalised first letters (as is the poncy fashion these days) as well as managing to totally fuck the spelling! I'm not trolling, seriously, when companies do this it just makes me think they're run by idiots.
I don't mind adverts, banners are fine, but when someone assumes that they can objectionably control my browser in any way, that's when they have crossed the line. The user has the last say in what their computer does and that's final. I don't know what other people think about this, but when the public says we don't like pop-ups i think what they really mean is 'we don't like things happening on our computers that we don't want'?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If this business model works for Wi-Fi networks, could it works for water network?
Our water network, here in Montréal, Québec, is in a very bad state. It will cost billons of dollar to repair it, and neither municipalities, provincial or federal government want to pay for fscking it.
I personnaly wouldn't care to have an ad displayed in the bottom of my toilet. I might even enjoy using it, sometimes, depending on the advertiser!
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
The guy who started this is Lawrence Laffer....Larry Laffer...Leisure Suit Larry..am I getting through? Hello, is this mic on?
Its a way to rope you in, then slowly increase your cost to actual hard dollars...
Look at what happened with TV.. used to be free.. then commercials.. then nothing but commercials...then cable... now you got cable and dish with a fee to watch the commercials.....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
First off, these guys aren't the first: a company called DotSpot (read my article) launched six weeks ago. Second, if you don't want the ads, don't use the free service. Spam is unsolicited commercial whatever that you're the unwilling recipient of. Terms of service are different. If you sign up for a free ISP and then promise to spam you, it's not spam. If they don't disclose they spam, it is spam.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Are these guys offering wireless internet access? or just a web proxy stuffed with adds?
It's like drung dealing...
It's all the psychedelic effects of drugs with the stink of dung! You too will say, "Man, this is some good shit!"
"Wait, I thought the consensus here was that everything should be free be and open. I for one find it apppaaaauuulling that they're not willing to offer a service that costs them money for free. I mean what if i'm at the park and the next kernel comes out and I can't update until I get home? This is just like the corporate fat cats, always trying to "make money to live off of!""
I know at least 20% of the people out there reading the headline to the article were thinking that. I'm also willing to bet that 40% of them are currently unemployed as they would be at work now and not slashdot. (I'm a college student so I got an excuse.) What's the big deal with this, everything "free" today is laced with ads of some type. Ads are everywhere, deal with them by not buying sugared water for $2 not by bitching on slashdot (which by the way is free to you and paid for by ads!).
Other than your internet connection, most of the content on the web is free but paid for by ads. If you're in the park and you get free web access and bitch because of some popup ad, then don't use it! Connect to the internet from your cell phone and pay for the minutes!
This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
Apparently it's not the type of thing that keeps you from using the "free" Slashdot service.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Lawrence Laffer? Are you kidding me? Leisure Suit Larry is running FreeFi? What are these ads going to be? Undress...Get in tub...Give Fawn Apple... Game over
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
Ideally, geeks like us would be more than happy to open their broadband connections to the world
Are you really sure about that? It works these days since geeks tend to be the only ones with netstumbler and similar.
But it's not going to be long before people start using this for less than savory purposes. Think a spammer would be happy to use a connection for free? How about someone looking for kiddie porn or visiting Al Quada websites? (I can't find the reference, but there was a story recently about a guy driving along a road, surfing porn off of unsecured WiFi.) You could get a lot of unwanted attention very, very rapidly.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Remember Netzero and others selling free (subsidised) dialup the same way, with these persistent banners? I used netzero for a while, it worked well enough but they apparently couldn't get enough ad revenue to make money.
Anyway, this isn't spam, and it's not a bad idea at all.
Any relation to Larry?
If you'd look at their site, it appears that they don't sell WiFi at all.
They offer places that are already offering WiFi an advertising revenue stream to pay for (or, more likely, help pay for) the WiFi.
I assume this is via their special FreeFi router or software.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
as long as they can identify xml-rpc payloads. Otherwise, it's not going to be pretty.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Considering the number of open Linksys WAPs increasing every year so this doesn't sound like a problem. How can they control the ads on personal WAPs? They can't!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
dunno about drung dealings.. but with random wifi access it's essential that no money needs to change hands between the consumer and the provider.
(because this makes it so much easier to provide and most importantly to USE. no need for cc's, sms or other billing ways. just use and go.)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
How exactly do they plan to deliver "persistent" ads adjacent to the browser without invasive software? Check out the freefi site, their claim of "no adware" is the most amazing piece of doublethink I've seen outside the legislature.
The sample on their site looks like it's IE-specific and probably easily filtered with Proxomitron. If not, then it's a software wedge a la Netzero, and non-Windows users will be screwed.
The question is, does it interfere with non-port-80 traffic? As long as I can still ssh, there's no problem.
but let's be clear...they don't equal spam
> It's like drung dealing.
I'm sorry it's nothing like that. Dealing in one of the 56 ethnic groups in China is totally different to this.
I've never received a supply of free Chinese people only to have them turn around and ask to be paid.
John.
"A new generation of spam is born with the launch of FreeFi's new Wi-Fi advertising network....
Excuse me, but that's not spam. It's like calling the ads on the side of slashdot for spam. It's not. Spam is something you didn't ask for. You do indeed ask for these ads when you chose to use their free service.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, so no reason to cry wolf!
You notice them too, if only on a subconscious level.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Several times I've read about Starbucks and their free Hotspots. Where are these? Perhaps in Manhattan or some other metropolitan region but here in Phoenix they're all T-Mobile hotspots and I have to pay $6.00 for an hour, minimum, and .10 a minute thereafter.
I would greatly welcome a free hotspot, even with some advertisements. Assuming they were unobtrusive, ie. non Pop-ups, unders, Flash with sound. Half the time I just want to connect to check email and have to pay for the first full hour anyway, so adds wouldn't be a major problem.
Sir, there is a dragon outside with an armful of armor. He's inquiring if we offer free refills.
But it's not going to be long before people start using this for less than savory purposes.
You're right, and that's another reason why the geeks-for-geeks free wireless web won't work. You've got to be geeky enough to put all the firewalls and other protection in place, and configure them properly. Otherwise, the ISP will cut you off when you get 0wnXord. And even then, you'd still have to be willing to accept the small (but non-zero) risk of having to stand up in court and say "it wasn't me, Mr. Ashcroft!"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Lawrence Laffer... Lawrence... Larry... Larry Laffer...
I know I've seen that name somewhere before.
Ah yes, here.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
but Soviet Russia wasn't communist.
A few examples of ads going too far:
- Ads using a significant amount of the bandwidth
- Animations
- Extremely large pictures
- Ads covering parts of the text you want to read
- Popup windows
Some ads have annoyed me enough to actually do something about it. And when I first got started with removing ads, I figured I might as well remove some more of them.I can understand why people discuss how this particular system is implemented. It is not perfectly clear from their explanation. And there are many wrong ways to do it. From their (poor quality) screenshot, it looks like you need to use a webbrowser to login. Not that I understand why they even want people to login, it is a free service, they could just let people use it without any kind of login. Seems it is all done with some kind of javascript, though I'm not absolutely sure that is the case.
It looks like they might think IE is the only application people would ever think about using. In that case they are wrong, if I was ever going to use this system, it would be to run ssh. Will it work only with IE or can any browser be used? Of course IE is required it could be run under wine or VMWare, or you might even reverse engineer the system. Of course once you get it working hiding the ads would be trivial, run the browser under Xvnc for example.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
What irritates me the most is that there usually is not an effective way to filter out the advertisements by those who are willing to pay for a service. It would be one thing people were willing to look at ads in exchange for a service.
If you want to market a service, offer an advertisement revenue based system for the people that can tolerate the ad nuisance but also offer a pay-as-you-go service that is ad-free for those of us willing to pay for convenience. TiVo is wildly successful because it allows people (with money to spend) to purchase a device that essentially kills off advertisements. You can very easily fast forward through ads (commercials) and it's really really great.
The bottom line is that we are barraged with advertisements almost every waking hour of the day. You wake up, and you see advertisements in the newspaper (even tho you paid for the paper). Brush your teeth, there are advertisements on the toothpaste container (try our new brand that helps get rid of gingivits!). Drive to work, advertisements on the side of the road. Listen to the radio, it's there (this traffic report brought to you by A&B Mortgage - for your mortage needs, go to A&B Mortgage). They are literally everywhere.
One day I tried to count how many forms of advertisements or sales that I encountered during the day. I stopped when I reached 100 by mid afternoon.
So for cripes sake, offer a way for those of us that have money and are willing to spend it, can avoid your blasted advertisements. Sell a subscription based setup for these hot spots, or offer a "after 5 truly free connects, you get ads or you have to subscribe" system.
Do it for da shorties
Something I have only seen mentioned briefly is that it can actually be cheaper to run a free hotspot than a paid one. With a free hotspot, there is no need for proxy software, billing software, authentication server, and of course customer service or tech support. Since an inexpensive broadband accesspoint/gateway is only $50 to $100 now, and a broadband line (DSL or cable) is about $50/month, a free hotspot can cost under $100 to setup and only $50/month to operate. That's why a lot of the smaller/independent coffee shops or other businesses are offering free Wifi. It's a competitive value (free vs. paying at Starbucks or other spots) and the fixed cost of $50/month is much less than even one newspaper or yellow pages ad so the cost can be absorbed as general marketing/promotional expense.
This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority
It's hard for me to believe that you don't use Google. Were you too quick to opinionate or does slight hypocrisy apply?
That aside, the service isn't actually free. It takes mental effort to ignore ads, and that has its cost, however hard it is to translate it into monetary cost. In tune with the trend of big corporations trying to make us, the poor_looking_for_freebies_everywhere, all angrier, more afraid, and angrier again, and spend more money on stress relieving services/medication/THINGS... and guns I suppose.
So we all win in the end... if we're very rich to start with, of course.
The ads may be mandatory for this service, but the service is not mandatory for you. You're free to use another WI-FI service that doesn't use the same business model.
Dude, turn dma on for your harddrive. Its this great invention that allows your computer to have Direct Memory Access to the harddrive so that it can write from memory to the harddrive, instead of using a Programmed Input Output mode where all data being transferred must be sent through the Central Processing Unit, hence the horrible slowdown. The fact that your computer's processor usage is spiked when copying a file should have been the first thing that tipped you off. DMA is probably off because you didn't install the driver for whatever Intergrated Drive Electronics cntroller chipset you're using. The same thing would happen in NT4 if you don't install the IDE chipset driver for whatever motherboard you have. As for BSD being slow: I've found it slight slower in some multimedia applications than running Linux on the same system, but in other respects its faster. Its only fair to give it half a chance by at least setting the machine up correctly. I mean, you couldn't compare an NT4 machine with no graphics card drivers installed to the same machine running Linux with all of the optimizations turned on and the hardware setup right. Plus, if you have to use this computer for work, it might at least make it tolerable.
^I'm with stupid.^
I know this might be a naive question, but how does the technology work? I mean usually wireless is the lower protocol level (ala TCP/IP) and ads are at a higher level (ala HTTP)...do requests for webpages serve up a dummy page that loads up the small and ad on the side and the forwards to the real thing, or what?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
What about people with limited screen real estate, especially with non PC devices?
I love using my PDA on the T-Mobile wifi setup, because it allows the built-in software to just work as intended. I'm thinking that wouldn't be possible with this setup.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Makeing money by putting ads on a users screen while they surf...
Yeah...
1998 called. It wants its business model back.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
And if they profit gouge and annoy the customer, someone else will come along offering less obtrusive ads while still making money, stealing all of the original company's business, making everyone more happy except the original assholes. Yay capitalism...really!
When you look at it, whats the cost for a small coffe chop of restaurant to offer free wireless in their place? Maybe $50-70 a month for broadband, then slap in a Linksys wireless router for $100, then maybe figure out how to lock the thing down a little.
It's really no cost to them. It's all tax deductable. They can only win.
Ok, so I see that they use something called a "QwikBar" to provide ads. This would seem to double as the login UI as well. What I wonder is how this system would interface with something like a Palm Pilot, or a Linux laptop, or any number of other wireless devices. The news article specifically mentions business travellers having PDA's, but the actual website for the company is a little vague.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Ads are everywhere, so do not complain about the appearance of even more ads. Would you feel the same way if movies (in theater and on DVD) started breaking up the way television is broken up? You can always protest by removing yourself from popular culture altogether.
That said, I think people have more of a problem with a middleware company inserting itself into the meager wifi profit stream, than with providers recouping their costs.
===---===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Then you have the right to pay for all forms of commercial-free media. Don't use free wi-fi. Make sure you only frequent establishments that will allow you to pay for their services.
I think that advertising is slowly losing ground as a way to inflict pain on people in the name of commerce. I live in the hope that it dies the ugly death it deserves (though I know my hope is very probably a dream).
Damned selfish attitude. Don't screw up the free party for those of us who actually have the ability to focus.
I looked at the screenshot for the ad service and I was wondering - I have a wifi-enabled HP iPaq that runs Pocket PC 2003.
I use it at hotspots frequently, because its almost always on me.
The running resolution is 320x480. (Would the ad fill the entire screen?) Also, Internet Explorer on Pocket PC 2003 does not support two browser windows to be open simultaneously.
What happens then?
Perhaps he is talking about Duck Tape brand Duct Tape?
I don't think I'm going to use ad-supported wi-fi hotspots any time soon, simply because when I'm away from my desk, I prefer not to be connected. (No cell, no pager, no laptop, no pda, etc) But I can understand, as many have stated here, that some free services depend on ad revenue to exist, and if you don't like that, don't use them. But - What I really hate, and it will be very hard for any of you to sway me on this, is stuff that you pay for that is laced with ads! For example, we just dumped our cable company (Bresnan) mainly because their menu sucks! They have to abbreviate almost every show title because there is no room to show the full title since the left half of the screen is used for ads. Another example, DVD's that show movie previews that you can't skip using a commercial DVD player because it says "Operation prohibited" when you try to access the menu or fast forward. I know what you're saying, "I like the previews" (and so do I, most of the time), or "Once isn't so bad". But when you get a few scratches on your DVD and it restarts the DVD several times during a viewing, and you end up watching the same previews 5 times in the course of watching a movie, that really sucks... Anyway, isn't this thread about wi-fi hot spots?
without use of invasive advertising software or pop-up ads?
Sounds like they may just be using a transparent proxy to add some HTML to the sites you view to show some ads. Could be as simple as a 2 column table with one column for ads and the other for the page you requested.
Time to break out the hosts file. Although this would leave an empty table on one side. There are some proxies available that will actually edit out pages for you, so you could have little proxy wars with the provider.
I know advertising has it's place, but for me personally, they just get in the way, especially when they are flashy and annoying. If the host can't afford to provide without annoying it's visitors, it's time to close up shop, or get a clue.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Anybody remember when netzero dialup worked like this? It was slow and anoying, but the best I could afford.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
i d= 8249264
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96420&c
Bah, always will be a way to filter those ads..
I use Firefox and I never see a ad (not even the Slashdot ads)...
It doesn't sound that bad to me. Free wireless access in exchange for some ads? Yes I'd hate the ads, but I don't think Joe user would mind that much so long as it didn't physically interfere with their experience like popups.
Heck, it would probably be entertaining for a lot of people for my girlfriend. I think the thing that a lot of slashdotters forget is that not everyone puts all of their worth in their independent activist intelligence. Some people don't feel insulted by things like this, in fact, often times they are blessed in a way that many of us (including myself) could benefit from because they just ignore it.
I mean, really. Think about it. User goes out to favorite public park. Surfs the internet, chats with family back home, has to look at skippy peanut butter ad. I'd say it's a pretty fair trade.
He who controls the past, commands the future... He who controls the future conquers the past.
Does anyone else find it funny that the President of Free-Fi cited in the cover blurb is none other than Larry (Lawrence) Laffer, star of the Leisure Suit Larry game series? Still lame after all these years...
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
They didn't all go "out of business".
they were "out of business" from the start.
I.E. not making much money.
They simply went INTO business
By Converting from free with a catch.
to pay for, with no catch.
That means more $$$ for them.
Since when is that called going out of business?
IMHO I call that going INTO business!
This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
I'm suddenly feeling perplexed as I type this message with a fucking banner ad across the top of the page!
In order to express righteous indignation, one must first be righteous.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Implementation method: Refreshing authentication page, works like this:
And now, the way to avoid this kind of solutions: Create a (trivial) app to handle the login keepalive stuff. Even if some silly javascript is used this should be really trivial for those who know. Luckily for this business model the chances of Joe Average actually going for such extremes are non-existent as long as the implementation is mostly non-intrusive.
I mind popups, spam, and anything else that is there witout my express permission to be there. I want full use of the expensive 17-23 inch monitors I have on my systems and not a pixel less is acceptable.
Advertising is a myth. If I need something I go out and look at it and buy it. I cannot remember the last time I was moved by a commercial to go out and buy a product at all. I'm sure many other tech savvy americans are the same way.
Advertising is so prevalent on the radio that trying to listen to music on my 30 minute commute to work every morning and afternoon is a work in futility becuase all I hear are ad's for head shops, fake products, and those damn radio ad's of the station itself.
Hello XM Radio, Hello XM Wifi next if they push this.
I use my neighbor's wireless, it's free and no ads!
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
Imagine you own a hotel and want people to stay there. Do you build wifi that pushes adverts on your customers or do you simply put in a few WAPs and share the network you have already built?
Someone else posting here worried about "unsavory" uses. The same arguments can be made about public phones and they are equally clueless. Anyone dumb enough to run spam, kiddie porn or whatever from a public hot spot will quickly be busted on their second visit.
Clients and other forms of "accountability" are bullshit designed to push adverts. They will all fall apart as soon as someone realizes it's in their best interest to not annoy their customers the way other do.
I run Opera, but I'm too cheap to pay for it.
Then I suggest you look at Konqueror 3.2 or a later version of Mozilla. You won't lose any features and you will get some of your screen back. I hope ad-supported wireless access takes off. I wouldn't put my money in the companies, though...
I hope they don't. They will create the kind of distrust for free wifi that shareware creates for free software. That would be a shame and it would delay the roll out of real free wifi by diluting the competitive advantage of a sign saying "free wifi". A sign saying "wifi, no clients or adverts" will sell well, but it's long and expensive.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
alias disableflash='locate libflashplayer.so | xargs chmod 000'
alias enableflash='locate libflashplayer.so | xargs chmod 755'
Run that as root and you can have your flash and ignore it too (I usually run it disabled.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
except "The FreeFi QwikBar"!
A piece of software designed to make me watch adds isn't supposed to be invasive?
If this was in the US, then contact the Better Business Beaureu. (Ya, I probably spelled that wrong, and no I don't care.) Complaining on Slashdot does the equivalent of Jack Shit, and Jack left town. Complaining to the BBB can result in real consequences for the hotel(s) in question.
Yeah, right. Obviously you've fallen for the subliminal advertising the ad agencies put in their pitches to you.
Advertisers are not willing to pay much for ads that you notice "subconsciously."
Actually, I don't think anyone has believed the subconscious effect of advertising since, I dunno... the 1950s when Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
First, the advertising won't work. People who "don't mind" adverts are members of the MS victim class. Their computers are generally so owned, there's no telling what will actually be displayed. More importantly, these people are so barraged with adverts that yours will not be effective.
About the only thing the customer will notice is that they are being screwed a little more. Their web mail will display in a box with about as many characters as a digital wrist watch, or about half the size they are used to.
Businesses offering this service will soon notice that it pisses people off. There's only one thing worse for a business than not doing something and that's doing it wrong. The whole scam, "no spyware, no adware" is a lie. People will notice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Using VPN has always been a good idea when connecting to public networks, but if it's going to help you block ads that would otherwise be issued to your browser, triggered by going through their router on port 80, then sanity is next to security on reasons to use a VPN.
I recall some phone company trying an experiment where all phone calls are free, but a recorded advertisement breaks in once an hour. That's not spam. That's a good deal.
:-)
Email clogging up my networks and slowing down my servers pisses me off. Banner ads don't (as long as they're non-flash and don't pop up, under, over, off to the side, or what the hell ever).
Even then, as long as they don't insert weird things into my ssh connections, hell, they can blast advertisements at me all day. I'll tell fvwm2 to autoplace them on some far away desktop.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
It should probably read "people really ignore ads." How many of us really see the ads? With oversaturation and not really caring, I ignore 99% of the ads that I see. I'd like to see a report on how web ads are working. I used to work at a local tv station web site and they were all but giving away ads just to get people to advertise on the site. After their contract was up when they didn't see the clickthroughs, they didn't renew the contract. You can argue brand awareness, but people want to see concrete results and people aren't clicking.
That being said and writing about this, I did look at the ITManagersJournal.com ad that is currently running on slashdot. Damn, I guess internet advertising does work.
----
Spam subject of the moment: Offshore account secrets -nashville disrupt
Right now, I am posting this post at a coffee shop with wireless access. Late last year, a few of the Espresso Royale Caffe's in Boston carried a paid WiFi service. I was already in the cafe regularly, so I paid the monthly subscription fee for $15/month. Since I was in the cafe on average of five hours each day, this was a comparable deal. However, the hourly rate was $7/hour, so the less frequent users were not apt to go on-line.
The service was provided by a separate WiFi provider. The provider puts in the equipment, does the billing and support, and ran the system. The owner gets a cut in the fee. Or so he thought.
The cafe cut their deal with the company after two months. Though they had an increase of customers and sales, their return from WiFi was less than comparable. I figure someone informed the owner that it was cheaper for the shop itself to deal with the WiFi on its own and offer it for free. Because it was free, the expectation for support is signifantly lowered. Also, there's no billing involved. You don't need to pay someone to create a system to take in money. If the customer has the equipment, they're on-line. End of story.
As a result, customers stayed longer because the WiFi is free, and the café sold more drinks and food. Their bottom line was achieved by providing free access.
The moral of the story is that sometimes, the process to charge WiFi cuts into profits. The investment needed for a support and billing system made the system less profitable than providing the access for free. Some times the best way to make money is to not charge.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
I would counter this by opening only DNS, SSH and IPSEC to the public:
DNS: UDP port 53 (with rate limit)
SSH: TCP port 22 (with syn rate limit)
IPSEC: UDP port 500, protocols 50 & 51 (and possibly UDP port 10000, which is Cisco's default IPSEC-over-UDP port)
That way anyone who uses my access point must connect to his homebase in order to do anything useful on the net. All open ports are either harmless or point to authenticated services.
This just seems kind of dumb. Systems that deliver ads are complicated to build and expensive to maintain -- at least compared to just plugging in a Linksys router and paying the cable modem bill every month. (I've heard the rumor that most hotspots spend vastly more running their billing systems than on the internet connections and access points themselves.) Why not just put your ads on the wall, or sell overpriced triple-mocha-lattes and prohibit people who aren't paying customers from "loitering?"
Sure if your signal's too strong, there will be some guy sitting in his car accross the street getting free internet access, but he's not actually costing you anything and and it's a pain to type with your laptop resting on the steering wheel.
Better yet, enable WEP, change the key every day, and put Today's WEP Key on the bottom of every cash register receipt at the coffee bar. This will stop the vast majority of wardrivers (and if you really want to go after the remaining few you can become a soulless bastard and press charges under the DMCA).
Just my $.02.
I'm willing to take ads if paying nothing means that they don't want my (real) name and address, etc. It's not that I'm doing anything sleazy online, so much as I'm not thrilled by T-Mobile keeping a list of every website I visit...
That assumes you'll even have access to the courts, which in today's "war on terrorism" world is not at all a safe assumption.
If you're unlucky, your wireless net access will get jacked for porn and you'll face the prosecutor.
But if you're really unlucky, you'll be declared an "enemy combatant" because you've aided al Qaida by giving them free anonymous net access, and you'll be jailed without the right to habeas corpus until the end of the "war on terrorism". Care to bet we'll win that war before the end of your natural life?
_nfotxn
My guess is that that the way that it works is as follows:
... as well.
FreeFi has their own router that the WI FI hotspot must use between their Cable/DSL modem and the WI FI access point. For each IP connection setup, this router injects the HTTP ad content into the connection established with the client.
This implies that the browser secondary window will open up:
1) even if you just connecting to view your email.
2) on any other OS linux, Max, or
The 'router' could drop the connection if the 'browser' window does not periodicly ACK the server.
The question is then how soon before someone implements a 'blocker' that will eat the ad packets while acking the server?
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
>I've never received a supply of free Chinese people only to have them turn around and ask to be paid.
Sounds like there's a Norma-Rae among the new batch of outsourced hires.
My big issue with these ads are the way they tend to bog down the connection.... I have no problem ignoring the advertising, but what I can't ignore is reduced xfer rates due to them streaming updated ads to me the whole time I'm connected!
I guess it really depends on how it's implemented. Software like ICQ has advertising running with it, and it never really bothers me in the least. The ads are small, and generally use very little bandwidth. Besides, they only seem to display 2 or 3 at a time.
But I could easily see this turning into a big annoyance, with hundreds of rotating ads, some including sound and streaming video.
His name can't be Larry Laffer, can it? Wasn't that the full name of Leisure Suit Larry?
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
The Proxomitron
I am cool with adding another proxy into the chain - and my proxy will simply unfuck their fucking :)
At the end of the day, Palladium notwithstanding, I get to decide what I do with the bits and bytes coming into my machine.
I hadn't thought about "Leisure Suit Larry" for quite a while...how freaky to find Larry Laffer is a real person! Any connection between the real and the character in the game?
If this thing actually goes online I just can't wait till someone hacks it.
It would be great if someone changed all the ads' text to "All your ads are belong to us".
Or if some malicious hacker hacks it and adds a little script... we could be in a "In Soviet Russia, the ads hack you!" situation.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
these assholes need to get the hint that we dont like ANY advertising. because it's intrusive, annoying, and all someone has to do is put spyware in one of their ads or a trojan and then your computer is fucked.
then most people in that case need to sue the advertiser.
online advertising is a joke in most cases.
only online advertising I've seen is google.
and people argue that google is monopolizing.. this may be true to an extent, but they're doing it the right way by offering us services we like and want, and do it right.
if these ads are more like adsense, then I dont see a problem, if they're huge flashing images, or javascript tricks that throw an iage over your screen and wont go away no matter how much you try to rid of it... then I say it's lawsuit time.
even you don't run a linux laptop like i do, you can trick out your hosts file...
And guess what company is making lots of moolah of wireless hardware, having a 20% marketshare in Wireless-G?
You guessed it, Apple. And given the number of PowerBook users I see taking advantage of WiFi in academic settings alone, possibly excluding Mac users is a good way to shoot yourself in the foot in the hotspot business.
Free hotspots are acceptable in places where it's not much of a marginal cost, and where people wouldn't be able to 'leech' very much (i.e., hotels and such.) But in places where there are a lot of randoms, that is no good.
:-) )
I've also seen pay-to-access credit card methods, but I wouldn't want to use them -- that is mainly for business users.
An advertising based hotspot as in this article seems very annoying, but it would also be pretty easy to hack Mozilla and get around the advertising overall.
How else can we pay for wireless? Here -- My idea, never heard it elsewhere, I think it's good:
A wireless hotspot 'jukebox' (or parking meter, or vending machine, or whatever metaphor you would like).
It is simply a box with a coin deposit -- anyone can go up and put a coin in, and the machine gives everyone in range Internet access for X amount of time. (1 dollar for 15 minutes? If people actually USED dollar coins, it would be good, I think).
Anyway, I believe the social model of this would be interesting: the person who needs it most and who can probably afford it the easiest (doing business or whatever) will end up paying for everyone as long as they want to use it. If there is no 'business user' at the time, the people who just want to use it casually will probably just volunteer to pay for one unit at a time.
This method is convenient, easy to implement, cheap to build, and easy to use. Admittedly, business users would probably rather have a credit card and authentication system that would allow them to charge it to the company, but I think that casual users would spend quite a bit more than they currently do. It is pretty cheap for them.
Anybody hear of anything like this implemented anywhere else? (If not, you heard it here first!
persistent set of ads adjacent to the user's browser
My browser window is maximized. Will the ads appear to the left of my screen or to the right of my screen? I hope they appear to the left of my screen, because my password post-its are on the right side.
The shareholder is always right.
... this past weekend that they are going to start allowing horse racing jockeys to have ads on their racing silks, like racing cars I guess.
Hmm, maybe paint ads on the HORSES too?? hehehee, that would be a hoot!
hey, how about ads on the hot babes at nudie bars? NO ONE would ignore them!
You can't have your cake and eat it too I'm afraid.
Cake, eh?
In our system, most businesses fail. Most wealth is horded by the top few percentiles. For the majority, most real incomes have been stagnant since the 1960s. Our communities and workforces have been devastated by two decades of rapacious mergers, corporate accounting scams, and stock inflation. Millions upon millions of Americans have no health care. Millions are so overextended in debt that they're only a couple of paychecks away from the street, even as home foreclosures have hit a 30-year high. Our middle class is contracting while our masters export our jobs overseas. Our armies are bogged down losing an imperial war being fought by economic conscripts. As conspicuous consumption driven by advertising has brought our environment to the brink of calamity, our labor force has been reduced to peeing in cups to keep their Wal-Mart jobs.
But, yes, cigs are $6 a pack in New York. Eat your heart out, socialists!
Lawrence Laffer?
as in Larry Laffer?
As in "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards"?
Somehow, this is about as cosmically appropriate as anything has ever been in my experience.
Currently I see this as a huge problem for pda user's. Ialready feel like even something the size of a dime is way to big. I guess I can only hope that the adwill not work on pocket pc. Like popups don't work now on the pocket pc.
The classic political "whitewash" concept (a P.R. cover-up) is referred to, when applied this way, as greenwashing. If you see an oil company--say, Exxon Mobil--describing how great they are for the environment, there may be an element of truth in it. The truth stops wherever there's no profit to be found. Pay attention to the distinction between the often vague, platitudinous words juxtaposed with the glorious images of unspoilt nature. They're visually trying to establish a connection between themselves and the nature they're--generally speaking--destroying irrevocably. A corporate-sponsored ad is not a good source for accurate information about that corporation...
They target PBS because they know the left-leaning viewers are unsettled about the spectre of environmental apocalypse--but not radical enough to really go nuts about it. A gentle greenwash will settle them down...
Granted, it would also be fallacious to assume the company has no environmental motive, just because they are a big, faceless corporation. There's no sense in either jumping to the negative conclusion, or breezily accepting the corporation's positive spin. But keep in mind, they're likely to say something like "we have invested over $2 million in environmental initiatives"--but a) that money is peanuts to Exxon, and insignificant contrasted to the money spent opposing the same initiatives; b) the phrase "environmental initiatives" is an amorphous or meaningless term; c) what exactly that "investment" would entail is vague; etc. etc. etc. Yes, my argument here is a straw man, but a fairly representative one.
To read more about greenwashing, check out these articles: These Greenwashers Don't Come Clean and Perception is Reality.
Ads that give us free stuff are basically good, but don't ever take them seriously.
Oh, I know they're only mostly doing it to be appealing to people, and I know full well they could go a LOT further than they actually are, so far - I read all kinds of stuff on both sides of the issue in addition to the "propaganda". It's still interesting to learn about these programs, and then go look into them on my own. And those ads provide a place to start when asking these companies why the programs they've told us about are mostly just lip service.
But, like you said - at least they're doing SOMEthing. They could just as easily do nothing and tell us all to stuff it. While I'd love it if they did a lot more than they're already doing - it sounds like you would too - it's a start.
As for the natural gas buses? Far, far outdone by those zillions of dirty SUVs Ford sells.
i am a soviet space shuttle
In our system, most businesses fail.
Business is a high-risk venture. Always has been. And that's why...
Most wealth is horded by the top few percentiles.
Higher risks mean higher reward. As the British SAS say, "those who dare, win."
Those who have dared, are most-likely to win. They are the most-likely to have the most money. Some people bet their net worth on a company, ony to go broke. Others become billionaires.
Such is the case in a dynamic, capitalist society. There are no guarantees except the promise of being able to take risk yourself, hoping that you too may strike it rich.
For the majority, most real incomes have been stagnant since the 1960s.
These folks say real income rose - even for the poorest 20% - by 12.9% between 1982-1989. Other time periods have risen less, true, but the point is that real incomes are rising.
Are they rising as much as the 530% rise for the executive class? Clearly not. That's where thrift-minded, cost-cutting, efficiency-zealot shareholder activists need to come into play in publicly-traded companies, realizing that executives are too much of a drain on profits and need to either take a pay cut or take a hike.
Our communities and workforces have been devastated by two decades of rapacious mergers, corporate accounting scams, and stock inflation.
Walmart's done a good bit to run small business out of business, yes.
Mergers? Perhaps, although the biggest merger of them all -- AOL/Time-Warner -- has been an utter dud the last few years, with talk of even breaking up again! Hasn't happened yet though.
Millions upon millions of Americans have no health care.
Those that do, get it promptly however. In other countries (Canada, France, etc.) you have to wait perhaps 3 months or more for medical service.
Consider the problem of the "Tragedy of the Commons." That is, if everybody had "FREE! click here!! FREE! click here!! FREE!!!" healthcare, the number of people seeing the doctor would rise, because there's no incentive *not* to go to the doctor. There's no incentive *not* to use that "FREE!," now-communal resource known as a Medical Doctor...
That sort of system leads to the problems found in Canada and France. A better system, IMO, would be for government-sponsored "catastrophe" healthcare, such that people with expensive, life-threatening conditions (leukemia, needing a heart-transplant, etc.) can get it without worrying about its affordability, while more-routine checkups are paid for by individuals and/or their healthcare plans.
This would lower the cost of healthcare for individuals, because the healthcare company would no longer have to worry about extreme expenses, while it would prevent the "tragedy of the commons" problem I explained above by removing the "third-party" aspect of payment from the individual. As it stands now, we rely on other people to spend money on us. That money would be more wisely-spent if we spent it ourselves.
Millions are so overextended in debt that they're only a couple of paychecks away from the street, even as home foreclosures have hit a 30-year high.
Whose fault is it that those individuals got into debt?
Did Joe Sixpack have his credit cards stolen by Stealing Sixpack and have huge bills run up in his name? Or did Joe use those cards and run up his own bills?
Did Joe Sixpack take out loans for which he failed to determine whether he could repay (with interest)?
Being in debt is almost never somebody else's fault. Barring unusual, not-normally-planned-for circumstances (extreme medical bills, acts of God (which tend to be covered by insurance), etc.) or the illegal actions of another person (fraud, theft, etc.), blame can almost always be placed on the spender, despite his/her attempts to plac
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Commercial television at its finest....
The advertising is BETWEEN the programs instead of IN the programs or INTERRUPTING the programs.
If ppl are going into a cafe most of the time like i do its for checking email, icq or other small tasks. U can put up with a small banner if u actually use a browser. As long as they don't slow down ur connection jsut ignore them.
Although it can be funny, tell them to plug the power in.
In other countries (Canada, France, etc.) you have to wait perhaps 3 months or more for medical service.
Where did you get this information? How do you define "medical service"?
Canada again - average wait time up to 16.2 weeks:
United Kingdom
The UK again...
The UK has some long wait times, alrighty...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
This is all personal experience on your part, then.
You attempt to marginalize me by insinuating that Google is the answer to problems and I do not know how to use it. I'd say "shame on you" but you are likely beyond the state of being shamed for anything.
I'd call you a moron, but I want to be civil.
Personal experience?
I live in the USA; I cannot comment directly on the state of healthcare in Europe. Rumor has it that France generally has the best healthcare of any of the European countries, and the number of people who leave the UK to go to France for surgery seems to substantiate this rumor, but as I noted earlier, the French still wait roughly a month for attention, whereas I wait roughly a week. So I'm still better off here.
You asked a question that can be easily answered (like most questions, it seems) by Google. If it was an honest question, then I apologize for my intentionally-snide conclusion, but I typically don't get honest responses to my posts, I get responses typically along the lines of "capitalizm sux, communism rulez! Go stuff yourself Mr. Capitalist pig-dude! And give me all your sourcez!!" So then I post a few URLs and either the person asking for sources doesn't bother to read them, or they say "you're biased dude! Find bad articles from the World Socialist Web Site, then I'll believe you!" At that point, I might as well ignore the person.
So Pavlov strikes again -- I've been conditioned to respond to idiots, I suppose, and just figured you were yet-another one of them. Again, I apologize if you were asking an honest question, because most people don't... I do emphasize though that I found all my links via about 3 or 4 Google searches, total...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Thank you and I'll add a "sorry" because I'm a Canuck.
I live in Canada; I cannot comment directly on the state of healthcare in the USA.
I haven't had to use our health care system much, but when I have, it was there, "free" and effective. Yes, there are wait times, but if the situation is urgent, you go straight to the front of the line. Any Canadian can walk into any clinic and consult a doctor without having to fork out money or prove that they have health insurance. This means that you do have people going for unnecessary visits and you might have to wait one hour, but I prefer that to the alternative, and if it's your health that is the issue, you make the time.
Sure, our taxes are high, but that's the cost of providing basic needs to everyone. Does that attitude make me an evil commie?