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Philadelphia Considers Free Citywide Wireless Access
The Associated Press is running an story about Philadelphia's city goverment seriously considering creating the world's largest hotspot.
"For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot....the city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers"
That is quite brilliant and actually cheap. Think of it, the city could reduce costs in other areas such as, say water meter reading - instead of having guy go out with a scanner to each meter, it could transmit to the office when necessary. That alone would probably save a few million. Services could use spare bandwidth for other services such as easier deployment of traffic monitors, stoplight optimization, human control of high traffic stoplights during peak hours.
I know there is going to be many people that narrow mindedly say that the dollars could be spent on the poor or in some other avenue of no return. The city leaders have struck upon an idea that will actually revolve into a massive savings, data collection, data manipulation, data optimization threshold that will in turn benefit the entire population - it just wont be a direct "ME" benefit to everyone. I'm actually quite interested in seeing how this pans out.
Philadelphia has been desperate to attract young profesionals to the city. This might work
The only way you can improve technology is by getting the public sector involved in a defining leadership role. If you leave it to the corps, they'll keep you at the horse-and-buggy stage forever, just to keep robbing you blind.
Let's hope this signals a trend.
If they're going to spent 10M taxpayers' dollars, I'd hope they have solved important problems such as local poverty and homelessness before they set up low cost WiFi for people that can already afford computers.
Well it's not going to be free. Taxes will pay for it. Local I suspect, but depending on the Senators and Reps from PA, they might get some Federal monies for it, good old Pork as the people from states not getting the dough call it.
Umm. Why? Installing and running a wireless network of that size is nontrivial. It's not quite the same as dumping a cheapo wireless hub on your living room bookcase. Think locations. Think access. Vandalism protection. Upkeep. Labor. Meow meow meow.
Is 10 million enough? Maybe. Maybe not. Not easy to quote.
They'll manage that the same way any other ISP does. It'll be reactive instead of proactive.
If publicly provided wifi is cheaper than commerically provided wifi, it is because the service is subsidized by increased taxation (or the redirection of tax funds from other uses).
There's nothing magical about the state - it cannot provide wifi somehow far more cheaply than it costs commerical providers. Indeed, the state strongly tends to be *far* less efficient than commerical providers because it has access to public funds and so doesn't have to worry about being efficient in the way a commerical company must.
Consequently, what is actually going on here is that the state has decided that everyone who pays tax is going to pay for those people who use wifi to have an expensive, inefficient service.
The service is *cheaper at the point of use* but it *actually* a lot more expensive because it is inefficiently provided, and you *will* pay, because the service is being paid for by the state, which is to say, through the level of taxation that exists.
However, because the state service is cheaper at point of use, it will wipe out the commercial market, who will not be able to compete.
The state will then be the only provider of wifi access. If, as is normally the case with state services, the quality service provided is poor, you no longer *have* anyone else to turn to.
Right now, if your wifi provider is awful, you change provider.
In the future, if the state provider is awful, not only is it awful AND expensive, you don't have a choice.
The state should NOT be involved in commercial enterprise.
--
Toby
If health groups have concerns about the ill effects of city-wide wireless access, let them prove that it causes ill effects. Otherwise, let innovation occur.
The Ezine Directory
After all, you don't exactly dial when you call someone on the phone nowadays, do you?
When was the last time you saw, let alone used, a rotary dial phone? Outside film and television, the last time I saw or used one must have been close to 15 years ago.
In fact, I bet if you gave anyone under the age of 20 such a phone and told them to dial 911 (999, 112, or whatever) then they wouldn't have a clue how to do it.
Dialling, per se, is obsolete. However the language is still with us, and likely will be for a very long time.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Troll? hadly.
Anyways, wireless networks in which you have to sign up for such as this one will be. Generally redirect all traffic through an access port. In such you will have to login to the system in order to gain access. Your login will be tied to any activity that you engage in. Of course one can hack the system theoretically, but it would be on the level of difficulty of hacking any other wireless system in which you are not given access too. Therefor I don't see the dangers in this as opposed to any other hotspot.
You slashdotters have your heads so wrapped around the idea of more free internet access (like a child's candy idiot brain), that you completely forget to ask any of the important questions! One of them being... since when is the government in the ISP business!! What about all of these businesses in the private sector!! Why doesn't the government go ahead and own its own cable/satellite TV service... own its own phone service... own its own automobile plant?!?!?!
what the heck is going on here? The constitutional box that we are supposed to be enforcing our government to stay in is nowhere to be seen... we don't even know what the box is anymore. and yet, this crowd is the first people to stand up and complain when a police office ridicules a priest for using public wireless access points outside of a library!! come on guys...
Call me paranoid but this seems like just too easy to tap into and monitor traffic. Or access wifi webcams. Or hundreds of other ways to use/misuse this system to watch the sheep.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Will this make it much easier for the government to monitor our email, VOIP, and IM? I think there are ISPs that only cooperate if there is a warrant to do so. What privacy will we have under this system if the city is more than happy to just cooperate with orgs like the FBI? Also, since this is a municipal service are we "virtually" give up our rights to privacy using it like walking out onto a public street?
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
The Internet has no real way to identify people. Never did. Big deal. It's no different than payphones - there are lots of ways to get onto the Internet anonymously. Tracking everybody and everything so nobody can put a virus on the 'net is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, and chasing that fantasy will only burden legitimate users in a myriad of ways.
How is that any different than a cell phone network covering a whole city?
High taxes and ineffective government are why young professionals leave. Young professionals that need a job or roll their own business will more than likely end up anywhere From Mt. Laurel, NJ to King of Prussia, PA before they start a business or take a job in this over-taxed, over-regulated, poor-service, corrupt locality. This is just one more boondoggle that will enforce the trend AWAY from philly.
Better shut down AM and FM too. And all those police radios, and TV signals.
In other news, Water has been proven to cause death under certain circumstances, but is not a controlled substance.
They can just hang some of that nifty new "Faraday cage" wallpaper... the stuff that blocks RF.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Those third-world "sweatshop" workers chose what they're doing, because the alternative (subsistence farming) is worse. It sucks to be them, but without capitalism it would suck to be them even more.
Starvation, you say? Sorry, but big bad capitalist agribusiness has boosted food production well beyond any levels that were even remotely conceivable 100 years ago. That's who's feeding the world these days. Are you aware that farmers in the third world routinely go out of their way to buy GM seed on the black market, in spite of the bans imposed by corrupt local governments? It's more productive. They want to grow more food, sell more food, eat more food, and have a better life -- the only people who object to them having a better life are kleptocrats in the third world, and affluent leftists in the first world.
The "global system" you're talking about is pure fantasy in any case. What you've got is a global non-system. People do as they damn well please (that's what you object to, right? Your fix is necessarily a centralized, dictatorial system). Corrupt, kleptocratic third-world governments interfere with the growth of private businesses. They grant monopolies. They demand spectacular bribes and kickbacks. Government interference is harmful far more often than not. Look at the Pacific Rim. Compare Hong Kong and Taiwan to the PRC.
And by the way, Stalinism didn't only "not work" for the millions shot or starved directly; it didn't work for anybody else either. The Soviet Union was a catastrophic mess. It took six months on a waiting list to get a new pair of shoes, and the shoes you finally got were nearly worthless -- because the government was the only shoe supplier and they forbade competition. Standard of living, in material terms, has a lot to do with HOW MUCH STUFF YOU HAVE, and HOW GOOD IT IS. If very little stuff gets produced, nobody has very much stuff. If the small amount of stuff they get is crap, then what little they get is going to be crap. That's how it worked in the USSR. Simple enough for you? Of course, there are intangible aspects to one's standard of living, too: Liberty, equality, and all that. The USSR scored spectactularly poorly on those.
Free-market capitalism with a democratic government does not make the world a paradise (nor, unlike all world-saving genocide schemes, does it promise to) -- but free-market capitalism in a democracy provides more freedom, and better quality of life, for more people, than anything else on offer. That's a fact. It doesn't only work for Bill Gates; it works at least reasonably well for almost all of us. The fundamental difference between that system and the shitty ones is that it has actually produced societies that most people liked to live in, and the others haven't. That is a very profound difference: Free market/democratic societies have achieved the only sane goal any of this nonsense can possibly have. In real life. No joke.
No, we don't need to try another wild-eyed "experiment" like communism or fascism just in case murdering a few million more people will make the world a paradise.
Yes, I know you're young, frightened, not very bright, and full of hate and resentment because you have no skills. I know you think the world owes you a living: You firmly believe that the Good Lord created me as your slave, obligated to work to support you. You'd feel better if all your paranoid fantasies about Evil Corporations were true, and you think you'd feel best of all if you could have a hand in killing a few million people in the course of trying out some psychotic new economic theory based on some slight variation on the same old theme of "ethical" dictatorship (or have you gone back to Marx, perhaps? Are you one of those geniuses who thinks we should try that one again, with some meaningless cosmetic alteration in the rhetoric that'll magically make it work this time?). I know how you feel, but you're an idiot, and that's that.
Hospitals probably aren't too worried about wireless networks based outside the physical confines of their building. Hospitals usually have a lot of concrete in them, and they attenuate things like cellular and WiFi signals pretty well. They get bent out of shape with cell phones because you're bringing an active radio transmitter inside the walls, and possibly into areas that have been shielded from outside interference. (Break out the old inverse square law here, too--the cell phone on my belt one meter away from the heart monitor delivers RF interference to the instrument ten thousand times more efficiently than the cellular tower a hundred meters away. That neglects the attenuation effects of the building itself, as well as the harmonics and nonlinear RF effects my cell phone has in a small room full of metallic objects.)
~Idarubicin
or Vietnam, for that matter...
>Those third-world "sweatshop" workers chose what they're doing, because the alternative (subsistence farming) is worse. It sucks to be them, but without capitalism it would suck to be them even more.
Who gets to decide what the "alternatives" are? In this case, the power isn't in the hands of those making the "choice" but those who decide what the "choice" is.
>Starvation, you say? Sorry, but big bad capitalist agribusiness has boosted food production well beyond any levels that were even remotely conceivable 100 years ago. That's who's feeding the world these days.
Ahem, you mean government subsidized agribusiness. A business that, with government funding, is able to destroy any competition by artificially lowering prices. It's easy to win when you break the rules...
>Are you aware that farmers in the third world routinely go out of their way to buy GM seed on the black market, in spite of the bans imposed by corrupt local governments?
I'm aware of a lie in the form of a question when I see it.
>It's more productive. They want to grow more food, sell more food, eat more food, and have a better life -- the only people who object to them having a better life are kleptocrats in the third world, and affluent leftists in the first world.
I have yet to hear anyone, anywhere object to people having a better life, even if they secretly wish that it were so. I agree, they want to grow more food, but are run out of business by state subsidized US agribusiness. Thus leaving them the "choice" of working as wage slaves.
>The "global system" you're talking about is pure fantasy in any case.
I'm not sure you're talking about. I'm not sure what you think I've been reading, or what you think my ideas are.
>What you've got is a global non-system. People do as they damn well please (that's what you object to, right? Your fix is necessarily a centralized, dictatorial system).
I disagree, and I don't think you could prove this if you wanted to. As far as people doing what they please, I think that you must be living in a bubble if you think that people just do whatever they want. I don't think you can find a case of that anywhere. Even in relatively industrialized societies, choices are constrained by a number of factors. In less industrialized societies, choices are constrained to an even greater extent, with more choice given to those with more money, of course.
>Corrupt, kleptocratic third-world governments interfere with the growth of private businesses. They grant monopolies. They demand spectacular bribes and kickbacks. Government interference is harmful far more often than not. Look at the Pacific Rim. Compare Hong Kong and Taiwan to the PRC.
Compare Taiwan to any 3rd world country. They're doing extremely well, partially because they ignored the advice given to them by the US, which was to open their markets and avoid subsidizing them. Instead, they chose to subsidize their markets, and build them rationally, which is exactly how the US built their industry.
It really depends on what you are looking at. You can find corrupt governments, and then you can find responsive ones. You get rid of the corrupt ones and try to create ones that are accountable.
You are also conveniently ignoring the fact that part of the reason that these governments stifle their own private industries, is because there is intense pressure from multinational conglomerates to open up the borders to "trade". Part of the reason corrupt governments stay in power is because of US military industry. Brazil doesn't manufacture machine guns, or tanks, or helicopters, we do.
>And by the way, Stalinism didn't only "not work" for the millions shot or starved directly; it didn't work for anybody else either.
If you want to deny history you can. Their economy did very well until about the 1960's. If it hadn't produced anything, or wasn't able to keep up tec
I dunno--suppose an entire city were to buy their broadband access through them...those wireless access points have to connect to the Internet somehow, though some sort of provider.
Plus, the expensive and inconvenient hassles of tech support get offloaded on to the city.
~Idarubicin