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Madison Rolling Out City-Wide Wi-Fi
It doesn't come easy wrote to mention the announcement that Madison, Wisconsin will soon be home to the newest Municipal Wi-Fi network. From the article: "'I made a commitment in 2004 to bring Wi-Fi to Madison,' said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in a statement. 'This is an important new service for Madison residents and businesses.' The Madison network will be rolled out at no cost to the city and the providers have secured initial funding from service agreements from ISPs. The initial phase of the Madison network will cover users in the downtown region of the city with plans to later cover the entire city." I love my town. Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?
Well, it looks like yesterday's zombie lurch accomplished something for the city!
It would certainly explain a lot.
Now even the Windows boxes will turn into zombies
I could just imagine this scene. Brainnnnssss......Brainnnnsss.... Oh my god run for your lives! ZOMBIES.... Wait, what are they doing now? I think they are reading their e-mails, whooo... thank god we are safe for now.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
The Madison network will be rolled out at no cost to the city and the providers have secured initial funding from service agreements from ISPs.
Hmmm... No tax dollars being used, sounds good to me. How are they getting funding? A subscription fee or what?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Midwest Fiber Networks is going to build a wifi system for the city at no cost to tax payers. Once the system is up they will rent it out to various service providers who can then charge whatever fees for access they wish. More information found here.
10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
Freedom only comes when the government stays out of business affairs. Who is it that tells you you cannot act freely? The government. They should stick to providing a world class military to defend us from those who would attack us so cowardly as the 9/11 terrorists and allow business, a.k.a. us, to be free.
...just like a lot of non-metro-sized midwest cities. It is unfortunate, though, that the myth of diversity (or even semi-diversity) is perpetuated by a lot of places around here (the UW included).
LegendMUD
This is nobody's fault except the non-white people who have not yet moved there.
Get walkin'.
But they are very diverse white people.
-sparX
I love my town. Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?
Maybe if winter wasn't 8 months each year?
How about a competitive marketplace for cable television? Charter sucks. Lots. Some of us Madison residents lease their dwellingplaces and are not allowed to mount satellite dishes. Therefore, I, and many other Madisonians, are stuck with over-the-air standard TV or Charter Cable.
Fortunately, I occasionally hear IPTV radio commercials for nearby towns. Hopefully those will make it to Madison before too long.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Slashdot. All about Madison, all the time!
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
There needs to be a reason for a small town to become ethnically diverse. A lot of non-whites live in larger cities because there are lots of jobs and lots of non-whites with whom they can relate. What you're suggesting is more drastic than bussing folks around for a mix of races at schools.
Put a server chip in each of them. Then we can play zombie wars.
.... i wish :/
(untill then i will just have to stick with my $2 a month, 100mbit internet)
Officially: "No comments"
How about a competitive marketplace for cable television?
Why do you think the phone companies are building out fibre networks? It's not for pure internet. They want to compete with the cable networks for TV as well. Verizon is one of them.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Yes, more choices for TV would be nice and it would help lower the costs. My family has Charter in our house and the costs are very expensive (about $120 a month for high speed internet and hi-def cable). Hopefully, it would also encourage faster internet speeds, as we are still at only 3mbits.
WiFi even at G levels has a maximum bandwith of 54Mb/sec, which translates to about 6MB/sec. Wow, 6MB a second, that's better than most cable systems, right? Wrong. 6MB a second for the access point. This is divided up amongst all the users within range, and possibly over a significant area if each individual access point doesn't have it's own 6MB/sec Internet connection.
In a real-world implementation with some kind of mesh network and relatively few hard-wired connections between them, you are going to quickly run out of bandwidth when people use this as an alternative to a wired connection. Therefore, this isn't any competition at all and serves to just allow people to connect when away from home.
The likelyhood that this will be used as a cheap alternative to a hardwired connection is high. Therefore, there is a high likelyhood that the service will suck from the moment it is turned on.
How about this Halloween you don't have RIOTS ??
Kudo's to Madison thought, I have a chance to park between Monona and Mendota everytime I go visit the folks. Downtown Wisconsin is actually a rather nice place to hang out with a lot of eateries, coffee shops, and "bars". Not to mention with UW Madison sitting in the heart of downtown as well, this network will see heavy useage.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
If you lease a property or own a home, no HOA or Management can restrict you from having a dish installed in a private living area. "Effective January 22, 1999, the Commission amended the rule so that it also applies to rental property where the renter has an exclusive use area, such as a balcony or patio." Read it yourself. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html It's federal mandate, if someone is telling you its against the rules or local laws to mount one, they're violating federal law.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Of course, if you don't have any view to the south you're still screwed.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Brains!
Madison has Zombies, wifi..... and the annual Halloween bash.
The U of M(n) and UW boarder brawl continues next weekend as thousands of gophers migrate from Minnesota to get trashed and dress up in rickety costumes in the land of badgers.
I hear Madison is cracking down on visitors this year so the dorms do not turn into brothels and riot headquarters. They make such a big deal about burning man, but someone should really report on Halloween in MadCity.
You won't be happy until it's 0% white people will you?
A politician who kept his word!? What is this world coming to? First open source software, then municipal WiFi, and now an honest politician. You know it is getting a little chilly right now. I better get my spare blankets ready; Lucifer might want his favor returned soon.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Madison has enough diversity. Any more and it wouldn't be such a nice place.
From what I understand, the standard bandwidth for VHF television will be going away pretty soon to get re-allocated. If the FCC were to allow the bandwidth for just one television station to be used wirelessly, how much bandwidth would that be per channel? Does anyone know?
Could this be a possibility when people decide that 54G is still too slow to serve enough people at any given access point?
Remember Madison is mostly a campus town, unlike say... here in Minneapolis, Chicago, or other Midwest cities of the ilk. That is not to say white people are the only educated people in the world, but there is not a large portion of people there (non-white or otherwise) who are not there for either the government work or the schooling. (sorry about the double negative...)
If it makes you feel any better, I am from a little dinky town in northern Wisconsin with 4K people where 1/3 the population is either Mexican or (mostly) Somali. That is pretty good diversity percentage-wise. However, it is a factory town and the "non-whites" are not there for education as they are in Madison - they are there to work at low paying crappy farm/industrial jobs right alongside white people stuck in the same position.
Is this the sort of diversity you are looking for?
in Cieslewicz' brain, when we were both running for the State Assembly in 1992, he in the Dem. primary, where he lost to now Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, while I was just fooling around in the Republican Primary.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
No riots?
What would a State Street Halloween be without drunk college students having keg parties, peeing in the lawns, burning couches in the street, smashing store front windows, and then choking on a little teargas and pepper spray?
I mean... shesh - it's like you were expecting a civilized town or something?
I live here. This is a waste. The city has been in the RED for years now and it wants to take this ON!?!?? WTF Madison is a pretty connected city. It needs to save the money and put it towards other things instead of this crap.
If I'm not mistaken, Madison has a pretty healthy party scene for the kiddies?
Add wireless and the possibilities are endless. Real time advertising of the night's 'all you can drink' specials: expect to a see a entrepreneur marketing a 'live ratio' (M/F) count app of the establishments to avoid a night of Octoberfest (plenty of beer and plenty of sausage).
This is like Strange Brew meeting Snowcrash.
My family has Charter in our house and the costs are very expensive
It's expensive for one reason. People will pay it.
I would love to have cable or satellite, but I'm not willing to pay for it until the price is reasonable. As long as people pay what they're paying, it's not going to change.
Either stop complaining or stop paying.
As a student at the UW-Madison, I have to comment:
Most of these destructive "drunk college students" are students from neighboring states, and some aren't students at all, they just come with an attidute that wearing a mask and being away from home turf allows for drunken destruction.
It is a very civilized place when they leave.
I'm very interested to see how this plays out and how effective it will be. I've spent a lot of time in madison (my girlfriend lives there), and it's one of the most spread out cities I've seen. They apparently have a law there (or city ordinance?) that no building can be taller than the capitol. It seems like having a city be so spread out would present some problems to deploying wifi on a large scale. Another thing is the UW campus takes up a large part of the downtown, and a large percentage of the people who hang around downtown are students. So, don't most already have wireless through the university? Is there really a need for city-wide wireless? Just a few thoughts.
That's about the sum of it. If there is anyway that municipal WiFi can go bad, he will find it. This man is driving our cities bars out of business, shooting small business owners in the foot, and only increasing the likelihood of the holloween riots. In addition to numerous other incidents that he has handled in the worst possible way.
;)
Luckily there are a few local groups that are pushing for an impeachment. Its doubtfull that they will succed, but hopefully they'll put enough heat on the city alders that Dave's remaining time will be wasted.
Also, the lack of diversity does not imply racism. Especially in Madison. The rest of the state refers to Madison as "A pocket of librals, surrounded by reality". I was born and raised in the Madison area, spent some time in the military, and can honestly say I don't give a crap what color you are, what god you pray too, or where you are from, if you're an asshole, your an asshole. With the exception of Texans, everyone from Texas starts with the check in the 'asshole' box
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Just call people people. Stop this rubbish where you refer to them as their skin colour. I feel so happy that in Australia we don't refer to people as "Oh that black baseball pitcher" or "this white such and such. If someone wins a race or has a job and are citizens of Australia then they are Australian regardless if their origins are from Lebanon, China or Europe.
The US reckons that they are culturally diverse but they all seem like a bunch of racists.
Yes. Mod me down. Show even more of your ignorance
Slashdot is usually about Australia, or at least it is on weekends. Can't imagine why...
Fredericton, my home has been running and expanding it's free WiFi for the last few years. Cisco just did a film showcasing the work. For the record, both cable and DSL are offered by paid services in the city. AFAIK the free wifi has not affect them too much and if anything as maybe prompted them to offer much faster speeds to compete.
"Madison is >86% white people."
What's wrong with that? Somehow I doubt you'd be complaining that cities like East St. Louis or Compton aren't "diverse" enough.
P.S. Please do not tell me how diverse the university is. Even with the university, Madison is >86% white people.
That's a goddamn lie!
According to the US Census, Madison is 84% White.
Hah. That told him!
Don't you think it's a little racist to base your opinion of a city on the skin color of its inhabitants?
The G.I. YOUTH3 0823 0803 0783 0763 074
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=33
GUNS
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=33
AMMO
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=33
SHOOT
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=33
RUN
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=33
And when a white family moved into a black part of town the neighbors said "there goes the neighborhood". Damn man, when are you going to realize that people are more naturally comfortable around their own. Diversity, simply for the sake of having it solves nothing any more than diversity advocates predisposed to the concept that all such and sundry offers some big advantage inherently. Diversity when naturally occuring can be all well and good, often it is not and you can reference New York city as a full spectrum example, however diversity should not be a goal or an anticipated solution anymore than some perceived lack of diversity being an indicator of a problem. Universal social harmony being achieved simply on the basis of homegenious dispersal of weighted racial population ratios is not likely. The opposite is and you'd be wasting time and money trying to artificially adjust the social fabric otherwise.
That said, Madison Wisconsin has enough diversity to be socially interesting. Pretty much everybody regardless of stripe can lead the good life with the possible exception of the "drive by brothers" down in the hood. Thankfully it's a small "hood". The biggest problem Madison has is drunken college students. In the grand scheme of things that's not a problem at all. Kinda like littering except more amusing.
All in all a pretty poor example of xenophobia. For that I might suggest a red state. Oklahoma would be a good place to start. Then work your way due east.
Yes, because when your sole access point to news and information is only available through one hopelessly inept overpriced monopoly, surely its your fault for not mounting a boycott. I shouldn't be able to read this news right now, I should be protesting by not paying a company who wouldn't even notice if I wasn't a subscriber (They didn't get me hooked up for over a month and a half, so I'm going to say thats the case) Luckily I can get TV over the air and I do; But its terrible how little you have access to without the Internet.
The problem isn't how long we keep paying, the problem is how long it will take to get an alternative. And hey, look at that, we're getting an alternative.
Trust me, I went completely unplugged for two months, its not a protest, its sitting in the dark expecting the power companies to notice.
Now god damn them for trying to let us get our Internet over the air as well.
Funny charter story. While they were hooking up our modem they got a call...
Intercom:Hey could you guys maybe come back to that house you just hooked up sometime tonight, he says he isn't getting any channels.
Stooge #1: ah thats the guy who was on his balcony shouting at us to come back as we drove off
Stooge #2: Just say no man.
Stooge #1: Sorry we cant get out there tonight.
(they then sat with us for 20 minutes watching the Sync Light blink in error while watching that 70s show over the airwaves, they left without getting our modem working, said they would get maintenance on it and no one ever showed up for a month even with calling them.)
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
I live in a mountainous regoin that makes it really hard to have any type of wi-fi implemented. When will there be options for the rest of us?
Peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God.
Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?
Cheese?
The Bridges of Madison County!
Oh boy that joke was so bad I posted as AC...
It's the UHF spectrum which is being reallocated, above channel 51. VHF is channels 2-13.
A TV channel is 6MHz (not the 7MHz below). Theoretical throughput depends on the signal to noise ratio (as Nyquist says). Practical throughput also depends on additional factors like the signalling and ability to spatially share bandwidth (i.e. co-interference between users). But perhaps you could assume that if the 5MHz bandwidth of a 802.11g/a channel can do theoretically 54MBits (and actually 25MBits), then a 6MHz channel could give 65MBits (and actually 30MBits).
Actually, it'd probably be a little different due to the difference between UHF and the microwaves used by 801.11.
But either way, a TV channel's worth of bandwidth isn't a panacea, especially if turned over to unmanaged transmissions. I think the biggest prolbem with municipal WiFi is the inability to share bandwidth well. I mean, the guy next door to me will download movies off the internet all day, because it's free. And that means I lose out.
Finally, I've said it before, I'll say it again. It just doesn't make sense to try this anyway before the deployment of WiMax/802.15. The backhaul costs will be very significant using wires.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I don't think that is true at all. Where did you get that from? I live in madison and I will tell you it is plenty diverse. I am white personally, but there is a large population of hmong people that live just a couple blocks from me, as well a s lots of hispanic and black, both rich and poor, often living just a couple of blocks from each other. Maybe downtown is a little less, but as a whole, I would say madison is very diverse. I also went to East High school and I will tell you that that is an extremely diverse school. Any type of background is there. Rich white people, poor white people, black people, a variety of asians, all different religions and income levels. Don't try to tell me Madison isnt diverse. There's even an anual festival called "Celebrate Diversity."
Interesingly enough, fire protection in ye olden dayes was like that, no pay, your house burned down. It got to be a protection racket with the local fire department company/corporation/gang showing up whilst the flames were climbing and demanding an additional fee, and etc shenanigans. The public eventually squawked enough to go volunteer and muni public driven.
With that said, today, heck ya it might work, we have a model already with private security companies and guards to do what people *think* cops are supposed to do. An all inclusive contract for security, including private fire fighting, might work. who knows, bet it would be spendy though. That equipment is not cheap, and seeing as how it is hazardous duty and requires continual training, etc, neither would the labor be all that cheap. It might theoretically help on insurance and mortgages though, so as to balance out your costs, if the private companies insisted on better than norm "building codes" and inspections for your structure in order to get their services. You could take that cert once you aquired it back to your insurance carrier and negotiate for better rates. Possible, interesting biz idea though.
Those ass-fucks at the Charter can go fuck the corporate teat some more. I know they won't like this. Suck it, Charter, suck it. Fascist pieces of fuck. Or, fucks. It's your choice, Charter whores-employees.
WiFi, smifi! This Mayor and City Council are destroying a once interesting city by making it an elitist mecca. This myth about Madison being liberal is about as far fetched as a free hot lunch. TANSTAAFL! All the liberals sold their homes and moved out of town because they couldn't afford the proerty taxes anymore.
Look for the new signs that should be going up soon when you come into Madison, they will read "Welcome to Boulder Colorado".
pbr7379 - Once proud lifelong resident of Madison. But one day it will be mine again! Free Madison!
Did anyone notice that wireless facilities is working on both the madison and google projects for city wide wifi? Guess that they must be big players inthis.l
You never know...is there any privacy policy associated with this network? I'd be worried about invasive spying by various agencies...to track dissi^Wterrorists, of course.
the folks who worry the most about enforcing diversity of appearance are often the ones who strive the hardest to enforce uniformity of thought...which is exactly what you'd expect in a university town
Shame on Google.
Do these kind of wireless tech cause a lot of interference for HAM's or scientific frequencies?
What kind of authentication and encryption protocol will they use? IEEE 802.1x? PPPoE? (Just WEP? :P)
...and the folks who worry the most about opposing ethnic diversity are often the ones who strive the hardest to spin the words of those they think they disagree with.
Reread the words you originally commented on: I care far less that there is little diversity here than I do that university and city officials pretend there is diversity where there is not.
If you want uniformity of thought, visit the hard-line conservatives that make up the majority of the rural and small town areas outside of Madison (and exist throughout most of the 'small town midwest'). Representatives from those areas are (and always have been) strongly bothered by the notion that a fairly progressive city (Madison) and county (Dane) exist right in the middle of them.
This cultural clash between the rural conservatives and the 'urban' (heh, as urban as Madison can be...) liberals is also one of the main reasons why this area is so minority unfriendly. Conservatives hoping to keep minorities out and liberals urging the importance of bringing minorities in debases the fact that we're all human, and ideally should be treated as such.
[/rant]
LegendMUD
A drum and bugle corp with girls
http://madisonscouts.org/main.asp?corps=madisonsc
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is no free service for anyone.
Two companies are paying the local power utility Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E) to place the antennae on street lights. At first, it will just cover the downtown area and expand later.
There is no free service. Pricing is still unknown, but it is supposedly going to be competitive with local DSL and Cable services. In other words: Expensive.
Visiting business people will not be able to simply sit in a cafe and hook up. Low income Madison residents will not get access.
This is not a public service. Nobody put up a fuss when Charter started offering Municipal Broadband over cable or local phone companies started offering Municipal Broadband over phone wires, so I don't get why this is such a big deal. This is not a municipal program, it's a commercial endeavor and we're handing over our city to these two companies so they can charge us for WiFi. Won't COST us anything? They SHOULD BE PAYING US!!!!! We should force them to offer a free service to our low income residents to help get them better access to job opportunities.
I fail to see what's revolutionary about it. One can only HOPE it helps to bring down the ridiculously high broadband prices, but I doubt it.
Lots of fallow brains out there, Ben. Lay one on us!
This isn't about the residents. Madison has a growing hi-tech economy and Mayer Dave wants to keep it growing. Madison has many reasons why a business would want to choose it as a place to start up.
Picture yourself as a hi-tech businessperson considering which city to locate. What is the first thing you look for when you open your laptop when you sit down on a park bench or in a restaurant?
Madison has an advantage because it has a smaller area to cover than the larger metropolitans.
So what you're saying is effectively, conservatives are racist. Thanks for helping prove my point. You "open-minded" liberals can't even accept the possibility that people who disagree with you are evil people. You can't imagine that people with good intentions would somehow come to a different worldview than yours. You define yourself as "progressive", because progress is good, right? Therefore, anyone who isn't "progressive" is somehow opposed to progress, a racist, etc. Funny that open-minded folks like you are some of the most closed-minded people in the world.
Shame on Google.
...at least it makes the zombies sluggish.