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San Fran Mayor Declares Wireless for All

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the throwing-down-the-gauntlet dept.

arvind s. grover writes "San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stated yesterday in his state of the city address that every San Francisco resident will have free wireless internet access. They don't seem to have much set up yet, and no proposal was laid out for the installation of access points in every nook and cranny of the city. I wonder what vendor is going to get that contract...You might be better off finding a wireless node using NodeDB or this oddly-titled site: cheesebikini."

41 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. How...? by Poleris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this mayor going to pay for this.

    1. Re:How...? by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the taxpayers will. The mayor's friends will get the contracts though.

    2. Re:How...? by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And how many people who live in the city of San Francisco cannot afford a computer?

      The median income is $74,000 per year.

      San Francisco is a fairly expensive place to live, there are not a lot of poor people there. I'm sure they are only concerned with the people who actually have an address- not homeless people, who don't pay taxes, or vote.

      Then again- cities spend a lot of money on streets, traffic lights, etc. And not everyone has a car...

      --
      No reason to lie.
    3. Re:How...? by (SM)+Spacemonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Then again- cities spend a lot of money on streets, traffic lights, etc. And not everyone has a car...
      Traffic lights and such exist for safety as much as anything else. They also help people without cars, ever j-walked in peak hour? Perhaps internet give security for democracy by allowing free access to information. In that case I propose spending more money on libraries, with internet access. But I suppose libraries aren't sexy enough for a politican. Now wireless! That gets votes.
    4. Re:How...? by bigman2003 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So city tax money can only be spent if it helps out the lowest common denominator? What about the other 99.99% of the residents (those paying taxes)?

      --
      No reason to lie.
    5. Re:How...? by autarkeia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      San Francisco has a ridiculously high poor and homeless population. It's truly obscene. However, you can bet money that the mayor is thinking much more about the poor and the homeless and the agencies that support them than he is about rich Pacific Heights Ladies Who Lunch. Google for "Gavin Newsom" and see what the guy stands for, and what's he's done for San Francisco. He's pretty cool.

      The median income is so high because there are so many people here with so much money. "Poor" people here make more money than "poor" people in other areas, though, largely due to higher-than-federal minimum wage laws. Still, there are huge swaths of San Francisco that are "poor," and the mayor has focused a large part of his administration on serving the poor and the homeless.

    6. Re:How...? by geg81 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The median income is so high because there are so many people here with so much money.

      If the median is $74000, it makes no difference whether the people above the median all make $75000 or $7.5m, the median will be unaffected.

    7. Re:How...? by gcaseye6677 · · Score: 3, Informative

      This article may show some insight into the reasons why there were so many homeless people in the first place in S.F. and why the numbers might be going down soon. I couldn't believe the city gives cash handouts to the homeless. The money they give out is not enough to rent even the cheapest housing in the San Francisco area, but it is enough to fuel one hell of a drug binge, which regularly kills many homeless people every year. Cash assistance for the homeless was seen as a good idea for understandable reasons, but now that the negative effects from it are clear, the 'progressive' thing to do would be to stop the cash handouts and use the money to provide actual services to get people off the street.

  2. Looks like another tax hike ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah socialism, take from the upper middle class and give to the lower middle class

    1. Re:Looks like another tax hike ... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ah socialism, take from the upper middle class and give to the lower middle class

      When you're dealing with multinational corps for services, socialism lets you get maximum buying power and save money.

      I'd say the ideal approach would be to have the city own the infrastructure and contract out the services, then make infrastructure maintenance and improvements a condition of the next round of contracts. That would ensure that the city maintains the ability to easily change companies and prevent them from ever being held over a barrel by their supplier.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:Looks like another tax hike ... by bigman2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One thing that ticks me off- is the assumption that the government cannot spend any money for services tht will benefit a large portion of the population, until there are no poor/homeless people left.

      City government's job is not to solely start at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, and start moving everyone up. The citizens in the middle don't need to wait until everyone below them has been 'assisted'.

      Parks cost a lot of money- most cities attempt to provide nice parks for their residents.

      Unfortunately, having a park near your house is not always a good thing. These days, a lot of parks have been turned into de-facto homeless shelters. Every city has the 'homeless park' where nobody else (who actually paid the taxes to build the park) can go. If you live in Sacramento, go hang out at Ceasar Chavez park, on any day other than the free music days. You will be surrounded by homeless people, and all of their belongings.

      In the town I live in (see my sig) we have a park like that. It is the park right near downtown- which is surrounded on 3 sides by residential neighborhoods. Who goes to the park- kids? families? No...guys sitting around drinking until the pass out or puke. Great- another park that can't be enjoyed by the general population.

      I am NOT saying that we should not spend money to help these people. What I am saying, is that when city funds are used to pay for something else OTHER than social services, it's okay. We can spend money (taxpayer money, and most of the taxpayers are not getting drunk in the park) for something that will benefit the other 99% percent of the community.

      Our city also has a large/nice homeless shelter - which for our population is a great base of assistance. But not everything we do needs to be for the assistance of the same group of people. The other 50,000 can benefit from their own taxes too.

      --
      No reason to lie.
    3. Re:Looks like another tax hike ... by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm guessing that Pacific Bell already owns most of the wired infrastructure, and I'm not that sure it would be cost efficient to build and maintain a second wired infrastructure.

      San Francisco's advantage is that it's such a small big city. A population of 776,773 and an area of 47 square miles yields a density of 16,526 persons per square mile. I have no idea how they plan to do this, but if they spent $20,000 per square mile for wireless equipment*, that's less than $1,000,000. Outdoor WAPs can be had for as little as $330 or inexpensive consumer routers can be adapted/ruggedized with tupperware.

      So, your point is a good one. The City could build out a wireless infrastructure fairly cheaply, and leave the actual operation to a private contractor.

      *The number of $20,000 was conveniently pulled out of my ass, and left no marks fortunately. I don't see how this could go higher than $100,000/sq. mi. if they use off the shelf equipment, though, so that's an infrastructure cost of $5 million. Peanuts! This is the sort of thing that attracts business and tourism, so I have no doubt it could pay for itself.

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  3. Good idea...but... by deanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town? And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.

    1. Re:Good idea...but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually I think SF has a "workfare" program where if you show up at certain places in the morning (and you aren't drunk or high) you can get work for the morning sweeping and cleaning. Granted you aren't going to get paid much and really sucks but if you need a way to get on your feet it can be a start. Do that for a couple of mornings, rent a motel room for a week, get cleaned up, find a shitty fast food job, then just start building from there....easier said than done but at least it's a possibility.

    2. Re:Good idea...but... by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Funny
      Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town?

      What do mean? The Mayor gave them free WiFi! FREE!
      They don't even need the cardboard sign that says, "Will work for bandwidth", anymore.

      Seriously, what more do they need?

      </SATIRE>

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
    3. Re:Good idea...but... by seudafed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My girlfriend is interning at Berkeley Mental Health. You'd be suprised how many homeless people have web pages or at least email addresses.

      sky

    4. Re:Good idea...but... by bigman2003 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's because in Berkeley, a ton of the 'homeless' people are just kids who thought it would be awesome to 'hang out in Berkeley all day and bum money for food.'

      I would guess that Berkeley has one of the lowest average ages for homeless people. I always enjoy walking down Telegraph, and having kids with dreadlocks come up, and ask for food- while flashing teeth so straight, that his parents are probably still paying the orthodontic bills. These kids hang out with their Che Guevara t-shirts, and talk about how 'everything should be free'. But aren't willing to do anything other than ask for handouts.

      Also, while sitting around in Davis CA, I've watch the same 'homeless' kids talk about going back to Berkeley, because they can earn a few hundred bucks on Saturdays. (In Davis, they generally hang out in front of Baskin Robbins, Chipotle, or Newsbeat). Of course after hearing them say this- the proceed to ask me for money 'for food'.

      I really hate those kids...

      --
      No reason to lie.
    5. Re:Good idea...but... by e40 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Federal social services have been cut, steadily, since the early 80's, started by Reagan. In the 80's there was a flood of homeless into the street from mental institutions. Anyone in Berkeley in the 80's could tell that most of the people on the street were plain nuts and needed full-time help.

      Berkeley and SF are tolerant places. The cops don't throw them in jail (or beat them and tell them to get out of town). Many places across the US are very intolerant of homeless people, and will run them out of town.

      The weather is good most of the year (not too cold, little rain).

      Put all these factors together, and you get a recipe for attracting homeless people from all over the country.

      It's not an SF problem, it's a US problem. The US should do something about this.

    6. Re:Good idea...but... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The best way to help the least fortunate is often by increasing the size of the economic pie - basically by making the middle class richer by encouraging economic commerce and innovation (cue naïve sarcastic remarks about Reagan's trickle down economics. Note, however, that I'm talking about the middle class rather than the rich. Furthermore, I am not speaking about tax cuts, but rather programs or initiatives that expand the economy, such as encouraging technological growth). Perhaps the premise behind free wireless is that it will lead to a slew of new programs and services in the San Francisco area that will lead to a lot of taxable commerce - tax revenue that can then be used to provide mental health support for some of the homeless. The most effective route to a goal isn't always the most direct.

      BTW: An enjoyable read for the armchair economist is the very enlightening The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created. It basically covers why some countries achieved such prosperity (hint - it isn't that they stole it from the poor countries).

    7. Re:Good idea...but... by cdrguru · · Score: 3, Insightful
      We emptied the mental institutions because there was a general concensus at the time that these people were being abused by being kept in an institution. It was much cheaper to keep them locked away somewhere than it was to dump them out on the street and then try to clean up the mess. But, the decision was made that somehow it was unfair to these people to lock them away.

      Now, mental institutions have never been one of my favorite places to visit, and especially not as an inmate. However, did we really do these people a service? I think not. However, this was absolutely not a case of "shrinking social programs" - this was all about liberating the mentally ill. Look where it got us.

    8. Re:Good idea...but... by Fnkmaster · · Score: 4, Interesting
      This is a college town phenomenon. I live in Cambridge, MA and we have tons of 15-25 year old semi-homeless kids. Sure, there are the 50 year old, Vietnam vet, burned out folks (many with serious mental health issues), and the older guys who are career panhandler Spare Change selling types - these are usually the loudest, slickest panhandlers, but they are numerically fairly small, whereas you see tons of the panhandling kids.


      Most of them seem to be disaffected teenagers who have temporarily run away from home or something along those lines. And sometimes they aren't actually homeless at all, they just panhandle because they think it's cool (no, I'm not kidding).


      Ah well, the nice things about Cambridge more than make up for some of its eccentricities. College towns with rampant communist subcultures are magnets for this sort of thing (makes you realize what would happen if an entire society decided to depend on other peoples handouts and decided to stop doing productive work).

    9. Re:Good idea...but... by superdude72 · · Score: 4, Informative

      And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.

      Newsom's campaign emphasized this issue. I'm not sure I agree with his approach, but suffice it to say he is not ignoring the homeless problem in order to implement free wireless. There is a measure on the city ballot to increase the sales tax and give all of the increase to social services. It will probably pass.

      The thing is, homelessness is an enormously expensive problem to solve, probably beyond the means of any individual city. Cities that "solve" their problems with homelessness do so by shifting the burden to other cities--it's not like anyone checks your passport when you take BART in from Concord. There is nothing to stop Concord from cutting its social services budget to nothing, so those people are forced to go to San Francisco for their methadone. This is what has happened all over America. And why not? If you can get rid of your drug addicts and homeless by CUTTING the social services budget, why not do so? Nobody wants these people in their neighborhood. We need to stop shifting this problem around and solve it on a national level. Unfortunately, it's hard to muster the political will. When suburban people see that their communities have no homeless, they assume the problem has been solved, and it hasn't.

      Wireless access, on the other hand, is relatively cheap, and can be done with or without national cooperation, so it doesn't make sense to put this on hold until we solve the problem of homelessness. It isn't merely a lack of $2-3 million that is at the root of the problem--if that were the case, a rich, liberal city like San Francisco would have solved it a long time ago.

  4. Is this necessarily a good thing? by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I mean, the wireless isn't "free", taxdollars are paying for it. Unlike private solutions, people who don't use it will still have to pay for it. I'm not quite sure I like the government providing a non-essential service when there are already alternatives. Now the question is, does it mean increased revenue from tourism, better reputation, etc counterbalance the costs of the wireless access points/maintenance? Will some prosumers even want to use this service(as it may not be as reliable)? TFA was short on details, I'm willing to bet the mayor is trying to get re-elected, so he probably hasn't answered any of these questions yet.

    --
    Monstar L
    1. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by Rayonic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > I mean, the wireless isn't "free", taxdollars are paying for it.

      Indeed -- and what if I don't like the wireless service the city provides (the service is slow, etc.) I could get cable or DSL internet access, but then I'd essentially be paying for two internet connections.

      Then there's the issue of rules. What kind of access restrictions will a city put up? Could you, in this instance, host a web site that gay people find insulting? I've never been banned from a service that I still had to pay for afterwards...

      --
      [PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
    2. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Interesting
      What kind of access controls will there be? Can any kind of abuser (spam, DDoS, port-scan, trojaned zombie, etc) keep connecting if (ever) disconnected? Will they block some ports like 25? What if someone sucks down most of the bandwidth in the neighbourhood? Can I run servers with dynamic DNS? Who do I report a DDoS from SF space to?

      If they don't manage it, the rest of the Internet might just throw the San Francisco wireless IP range into a "blackhole at the firewall" list in self-defence. And if SF taxpayers can't connect to anyone, who do they call at "SanFran Tech Support" to complain?

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    3. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by k98sven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's infrastructure. You could say the same thing about highways too.

      It's very, very difficult to calculate the benefits of this, and really of any infrastructure investment.
      (as far as I understand, there are no good models for this. Building roads is still mostly a political decision.)

      But there are lots of things which conciveably balance the costs, most notably increased business productivity, competition and growth, and increased property value (which generates returns though property tax).

      So, yeah, it's political.. but it doesn't automatically mean it's not economically justified. But whether it is or not is pure speculation. There's no way to tell in the short run.

    4. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by autarkeia · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The mayor is *not* trying to get re-elected. The mayor, in fact, is only in the first year of his 4-year term, and by just about any San Franciscan's account he has done nothing but kicked ass and mopped up the streets afterwards. He has completely revamped the budget, took a voluntary pay cut, reorganized the police and fire departments, cracked down on unsolved murders and crime, led the nation on human rights and gay marriage issues, and tackled San Francisco's biggest issue-- homelessness-- with a multidisciplinary team that seems to actually be working.

      Say whatever you want to about Gavin Newsom, but he has been a major boon to San Francisco at a time when it's down. The WiFi thing of course could cost a lot of money, but imagine the potential benefits of pervasive, citywide, free access.

  5. COOL! by ferrellcat · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess that means that THIS guy will finally get online! http://www.dkrupa.com/comics/28.jpg

  6. Just one question by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many spammers live in San Francisco? How many will move there?

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  7. Re:Stop Now by bergwitz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service," Doesn't that also imply that they need a device to access the free wireless internet service? Like a computer or PDA. Free PDAs for the homeless? Off course, wireless is the only alternative for the homeless.

    --
    Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
  8. ahhhhhhh by DeathByDuke · · Score: 3, Funny

    let's go warflying dudes.

  9. Well looky here. by bryanp · · Score: 4, Funny

    He's got the circuses part covered. Where's the bread?

    --
    "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
  10. So when the RIAA try some more lawsuits... by N3koFever · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...does the population of San Francisco get sued?

  11. Anti-competitive? by Spykk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder what the local ISPs think about this. If it's wrong for microsoft to include a free web browser, is it wrong for the government to provide free internet access?

  12. WiGLE! by SuperQ · · Score: 4, Informative

    of course, the BEST place to find AP's is WiGLE.net, the database has listings for 1,847,784 APs.

  13. um, it's not free as in beer nor as in speech by humanerror · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We already have a decent, FREE, and fast wireless network in The City: SFLan.org.

    Do you really want to be bound by the government's TOS, for a service "sold" as free that you are in fact paying for, whether you use it or not?

    Of course, using public money for questionable ends is nothing new... but dear Gavin already invests far too much of our money waging war on the poor (no, not on poverty... on the poor).

    --
    "We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
  14. Wireless in SanFran?? by jmcmunn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have never been to San Fran myself, but my dad has on numerous occasions. And from his stories, the terrain in SF is "pretty hilly" to say the least. I have had problems at home with my wireless sometimes reaching from one floor to another without messing around with the antenae all the time. It seems like they're going to need a heck of a lot of repeaters/ap's for this to work out at all in that terrain.

    Wouldn't it be cheaper just to run hard-wired fiber into every building, and drop off a linksys wireless router to everyone? Probably not really, but it sure seems like it is going to be very difficult to get a good wireless network in that terrain.

    is there an election coming up in SF that this guy is trying to get votes for?

  15. There is no such thing as a free lunch by toupsie · · Score: 4, Insightful
    1) Someone has to pay for it. It will be a freebie to certain voting blocks and a huge cost to others. If you are net tax contributor to the coffers of San Francisco, leave now!
    2) This will be a freebie to the criminal elements of San Francisco and a huge cost to the law abiding, non-ubergeek. Consider yourself "pwned".
    3) Expect this project to cost 10x what it is initially claimed. Gavin Newsom has a lot of paybacks for getting himself into power in San Francisco. Cost overruns will be massive.
    4) This is best suited by corporation competition not government largess. Do we really want municipal Ma Bells all over the country?

    If you want to do this on the cheap, make the homeless wear waypoint hats for their welfare checks. (insert joke about the waypoints keeping the government satellite signals out of their heads).

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  16. Free internet ???? by mritunjai · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does everybody in SF already has free medical facilities ? Free shelter ?

    --
    - mritunjai
  17. Another site listing Wi-Fi is WiFiMaps.com by drewzhrodague · · Score: 4, Informative

    Another site listing Wi-Fi is WiFiMaps.com. This covers mainly the US, and data is updated by our users who upload their wardriving scans.

    --
    Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
  18. What's up with all the broken Coral cache links? by douglips · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All the links in the story end in ".nyud.net:8090", in an attempt to use Coral. The problem is, that is appended after everything else, which makes it irrelevant.

    Remember, its:
    http://hostname.com.nyud.net:8090/rest/of/ur i?what ever
    not
    http://hostname.com/rest/of/uri?whateve r.nyud.net: 8090

    Strangely enough, in this case all the links seem to work faster than their coral counterparts.

    Fixed coral links:
    Reuters story
    NodeDB
    cheesebikini

    --
    My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M