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Rural Oregon Leads the Way for Large-Scale WiFi
atkulp writes "While cities and incumbent telecommunications operators are fighting it out over municipal WiFi, it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way for large-scale deployments of WiFi and WiMax." The privately funded $5 million dollar wireless network services a modest 700 square miles and seems to be the only show in town.
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
"Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education," Uhhh, I don't know about this. I don't like the idea of the feds using my internet traffic for "surveillance".
No Sigs!
Is that anything like a number #2 pencil? Or a 10% percent raise?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
"it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way" let's spell it Oregon
From what I've seen, normal Wifi (802.11b and 802.11g) can suffer denial of service fairly easily, even with simply misconfigured clients. I'm not sure if WiMax addresses this, I hope so, but TFA says that the wireless network will cover surveillance presumedly for the chemical depot(s) as well as the shipping yard, and also that various emergency signs can be controlled by WiFi. Assuming they've got these devices and monitoring/control [sub]nets setup securely, it seems that they're still quite vulnerable to a simple denial of service attack. Taking out traffic lights and/or jamming radios is not a new idea to Bad Guys (and Bad Girls), it seems this makes it fairly easy to accomplish criminally-intented DoS with OTS components. I hope there's more to it, possibly a followup article from Wired, which has gotten so damned fufu in recent years.
Yay Oregon!
-IDkrysez
Was it a bat I saw? Racecar. Stack cats. A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
I agree, but it still is good to see people making it work, even at such a small scale. I've used wireless since it became cheap enough, using a/b/and now g and better. It has never really been that speedy but, once setup works quite well. The more people who get involved the better it can become.
A bribe in my dictionary is something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.
The case in point: a law maker makes a law in return for campaign contributions. The law maker would not have made the law without the contributions. The contributor would not have contributed without getting the law.
That is bribery.
HTH
threadeds blog
My town is in the same situation. I have developed the equation for political drag on wifi:
Dp[wifi] = n/(1/2pU^2A*Re)t^S
where S stands for stupidity factor, and n is the number of telecoms, p ~ politicians, U ~ potential userbase factor, A ~ land area/size, Re ~ Retardation number, and t ~ reasonable time expectation
There are several community wireless networks that do very well and the one in seattle is larger than this if you count all the hotspot's and their square footage of coverage.
Maybe for a privately owned pay for use, but not for existing wireless coverage.
and the funny part is the community wireless projects are done without wimax. 802.11 point to point works very well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah this brings us back to Bill Gates quotes paralleling my pr0n res hypothetical to be good enough to suit us (like the 640KB did), but, I mean, c'mon, won't that video quality suffice?
The answer is yes, until the market fully adopts 3D holograph pr0n that will require some more zeros and ones.
I mean, c'mon.
On tv shows such as 24 and Spooks, you know how when a bad guy uses his credit card at a gas station and they can immediately pull up the CCTV footage of him doing it? Even though CCTV kind of means that it's tv on a CLOSED CIRCUIT? I think that's what the article means when it says the cloud can be used for "surveillance" - it makes this commonly used artistic license a reality. In the future, I have always hoped there will be wireless internet pretty much everywhere, for free. I'm not sure of a way for the providers to make back their money other than taxes, but I'm sure there will be a solution.
the Borg run on WiFi?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Ronald Reagan had this to say: "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." which along with another statement he made, "The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." gives an apt description of the process of government.
I happen to have a copy of Black's Law Dictionary here, so I decided to look it up:
Bribe:
Any money, goods, right in action, property, thing of value, or any promise or undertaking to give any, asked, given, or accepted, with a corrupt intent to induce or influence action, vote, or opinion of person in any public or official capacity.
abbreviated, that would be:
Any money given with intent to influence action of a person in any public or official capacity.
Given the legal definition of a bribe, I'd say that any incident where a politician accepts campaign contributions from a lobbyist and changes stance on any particular issue or votes favorably towards the cause of the lobbyist should be suspect.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
The general figure that is thrown around is that 90% of cases are settled through plea bargains.
There have been court cases which have called 'leniancy' and 'plea bargains' as the bribery that they are, but if those decisions were allowed to stand, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt under the caseload.
here's some guy's book/rant, where he brings up the topic of total immunity. Pretty much the ultimate bribe: We'll forgive your past crimes if you tattle on someone else.
Immunity, by the way, is a holy grail of sorts in the law making biz. Various industries are always trying to get language slipped into a bill that will grant them immunity from lawsuits.
Bribes make the world go round
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
According to the article, this county has roughly the same population that my county has (my county has a little over 12,000 and no traffic lights, compared to the one in the story with 11,000 and no traffic lights). The only difference is that my county would likely put up a fight over having towers scattered all over the place, regardless of what service they were providing.
This county also blocked a coal-burning power plant, so the people who wanted it moved it 2 miles, just across the county line, and got it built.
And blocked a landfill in a remote section of the county.
I'm not sure that a project like this would face such opposition, especially if the towers could also provide cell phone service (which is also very poor in the county). I know that everyone I talk to that can't currently get high-speed internet is always saying "oh there has got to be a way!" especially considering that the phone lines in much of the county are so old that connections above 28.8kbps (that's a 3K transfer rate) are rare.
I have heard that the school system wants to do something like this, but I know the admin who thought it up, and I don't really want to use something he runs. I heard something about "free but filtered" and I almost said "don't bother" right then and there.
A couple of yearss back I started looking into using an alternative ISP for my DSL service. After checking into several that had packages that more closely suited my needs I quickly discovered that the rates that the few providers that offered service in my area were 2 - 3 times higher that what I was already paying for with my telco based ISP. It seems that the FCC regulations that required telcos to open their networks to regional ISPs at discounted rates applied to everyone except Verizon. Economic legislation should only be used to encourage competition not stifle it as we see with any legislation promoted by the Bigs (like the DMCA an the idea of software patents). My hat's off to Mr. Ziari and the people of Hermiston, Oregon for getting this set up on their own.
"Never limit what you know to what you do", Me
So, 2 years ago an Iranian immigrant comes to this tiny rural county with an idea to set up a wireless network that would allow all sorts of surveillance of any transactions or other data sent over it by those that set it up. Oh, and by the way, this tiny rural county that has this Iranian immigrant creating a wireless network that is privately funded (yet they never mention who exactly is funding it except to say that it was at Ziari's expense) just happens to have one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the US.
Is it just me, or does this coincidence sound like the beginning of a 24 season?
Time they applied this to themselves.
Equal funding of ALL political parties. Equal media access to ALL political parties. People implicated in bribery get charged with treason.
that I can now get in touch with a doctor when I'm on 'The Trail' (as they call it in Oregon) and Hannah comes down with dysentery?
If you read about it, the U.S. government is far, far more corrupt than the average person thinks. Huge amounts of money are borrowed and embezzled. Some people say the money is not stolen, but it somehow makes it to the pockets of the rich, making the rich richer.
The U.S. government is very violent: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories. The violent way is preferred because it is more profitable: Ike Was Right About War Machine. ("Ike" is former President of the U.S. and former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower.)
Here is the same video, but with no transcript, and it requires watching a commercial: Andy Rooney on the Iraq War. Here is an MP3 file of the same broadcast: Andy Rooney on the Iraq War. Here is a transcript from the publisher: Ike Was Right About War Machine.
The U.S. government is for sale to whomever has money: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
From reading about the U.S. government, I've found that many agencies operate efficiently and sensibly, but that the corruption caused by the military-industrial connection is more than one person can completely understand, there is so much material.
I think it's more like: "Stop talking politics! What happened on Big Brother last weekend. OMG look what the girl is wearing!? Fat people SHOULD NOT be wearing Abercrombie and Fitch!?!" Wow. (Sorry, OT rant...) (Most) Americans are elusive and close-minded when it comes to politics. We have the big guys patting us on the head saying, "Everything will be ok. Don't think. Don't question. Go about your regular daily routine and everything will be fine." I met a 26 year old last night that said, "The President will pass the law for Christians. He can do anything!" My response: "No, he is not a dictator. Bills must be passed through the H.O.R and the Senate first." Her response: "Who are they!?!?" She could probably tell me Tom Cruise's foot size and what Jennifer Aniston had for breakfast on the second Monday in August though... Anyways, it looks like its starting to hit the fan finally with Rove, DeLay, Brown and all these other morons. About time. I thought the checks and balances system was done for. These people need to be strung up, cause the little guys are always footing the bill. (Now if I could just figure out a way to get high-speed from a non-conglomerate...) BTW, I'm from Dayton, OH--I think it was more like 45 degrees this weekend Alex...!
The only way to address this is to stip all parties of all funding, and then allocate money for campaigning from tax revenue.
Do we really give the same amount to every party (wasting my tax dollars on everybody from the Socialists to the Reform party) or do we give more money to the more popular parties (thus writing the current Republicrat party oligarchy into law)? It sounds like you're in favor of the former - what prevents me from starting my own "Ilikemoneycrat" party tomorrow? It would be great to rant on TV commercials instead of Slashdot comments.
Do we prevent people from publishing their own political statements with non-tax-dollars (thus infringing everyone's freedom of speech) or do we only prevent people from giving money to others to have political messages published (thus infringing everyone but the rich's freedom of speech)? I can't afford to buy a TV commercial right now, but I can find a hundred people willing to combine our contributions to buy one. If you limit our ability to pool that money together, all you'll do is limit political advertisements to the people rich enough not to need anyone else's money.
When you equalize "media access", how are you going to determine what gets counted as access? Does a documentary about the unibomber have to be balanced with one about abortion clinic bombings, so we don't unfairly show too low a ratio of right-wing to left-wing nutjobs? If a news show's guest economist says that the President's Social Security plan is horrible, does that count as "access" for all his challengers? If so, then the big media conglomerates can game the system by burning up airtime on weak support for candidates they dislike. If not, then the big media conglomerates can own the system by being the only corporations with unlimited influence on mainstream political discussion.
But for that matter, how do you define "media"? Do Daily Kos and Little Green Footballs balance each other out, or do each have to give "equal access" to opposing viewpoints? Could you or Slashdot be in trouble if your own globally published comments are too partisan? If so, what does that do to your freedom of speech? If not, wouldn't that be a great loophole for paid hordes of astroturfers to slip through?
Everybody's got their own pet solution for half of the world's problems (I'm no exception - in the political arena my hobby horse is Condorcet voting), and nobody can foresee every one of the unintended consequences which their proposed reforms would bring, but please at least try! You'll quickly see just how hard a problem campaign finance reform is. It's not as easy as calling all the money "bribery", because it isn't being spent on fabulous mansions for Congressmen. It's being spent on political speech, and any restrictions on political speech can only exacerbate the problem or replace it with something worse.
There is no way to make representation in any way equal for every candidate. That's why we should spend our time and energy making voters more educated and reasonable. That will minimize the advantage billion dollar campaigns have, as well as decrease the likelihood that companies can bribe officials and avoid having the public find out.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.