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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.
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.
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
Warning, hyperbole and stereotypes ahead!
So you are saying that none of the taxpayer's money should be spent on projects that actually benefit taxpayers? All of it should rightly go to crazy people that live in boxes and welfare leeches?
The chronically homeless and poverty stricken are generally the result of societal influences, and are not something that can be solved simply by throwing the city's budget at it.
I am sure there is a hefty portion of the budget already going towards various programs, but most of them are likely stopgap measures instead of education about birth control and financial planning, two of the largest (legal) hurdles faced by those below the poverty line.
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
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.