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US McDonald's Wi-Fi Going Free In January
Knowzy writes "After five years behind a paywall, McDonalds plans to stop charging for its Wi-Fi in mid-January in the US. According to the Dallas Morning News, you aren't even required to make a purchase — 'free is free,' a spokesman said. It's also been widely reported that they won't impose time limits on your surfing. With around 20,000 free hotspots between McDonald's and Starbucks (who went free[ish] earlier this year), anyone still charging for Wi-Fi is going to look foolish, if not downright greedy."
starbucks isn't charging for the WIFI. Some companies, however, are charging for the access. Panera does this - but I don't think they label it free wifi either.
So yeah, you have wifi, free and open, but it's still requiring a purchase at panera to just use the damn internet (which is horribly slow at their locations anyway).
Perhaps to use the wifi, but you cant sit in the building or on the lot unless you bought something. " parking for customers only"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is it just me, or free wifi from Starbucks is just some wishful thinking? I've traveled to San Deigo, Denver and Boston in the past week and tried on several occasions to get wifi signal. And in each case, Starbucks was requiring me to pay. I don't know why I thought it was free ... may be it was trumpeted in some earlier slashdot article?
AT&T worked out a deal where the hotspots at McDonalds are partnered up with them, so iPhone customers can automatically get signed in and use them for free. It's been that way for months now. I've used the one in my neighborhood a number of times, as well as a couple of them when I was on a road trip.
Only complaint I've had, in general, with Mc Wi-Fi is, I think someone needs to do site surveys on those things and improve the reception! I've always gotten pretty weak signals that are still generally usable, but worse than I get throughout most of my house with my own wireless router.
The scraps that were left over after they washed the machines.
Yeah, but the fries are the best out there
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
All AT&T DSL customers get "free" wifi too. At many McD, Starbucks, Barnes & Nobel, and a few others. Usually the SSID is "attwifi"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Free for up to 2 hours (per-day, may not be split across multiple login sessions) if you've registered one of their Starbucks stored-value cards and you've used it to make a purchase sometime within the last 30 days.
So more "free with purchase"-style.
We've had this for years in Aus and there's no easy way to p2p, there's a nice filter stopping pretty much all mainstream porn sites etc.
FYI they aren't using the microwave to reheat the burger, it is to melt the cheese. No cheese, no microwave. *This is based on my experience working at BK in high school
Starmen.net
That's what we call "mechanically separated meat." Leftover meaty sludge pressure washed off the bones after the real meat has been stripped away. That's what they called a "Chicken McNugget" when I was growing up, though they claim that now their McNuggets are made with actual meat.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Its not much use in the UK, because while you are using it, you will likely get a GBP60 fine for parking. Most McD's have clampers that get you if you stay longer than a set time - often 30 minutes! They even tried it on a judge (Google is your friend).
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Sorry to disappoint you, but that is not *real* roast beef. I worked at an Arby's while in college. If you notice, there is never any marbling in the beef. It is a processed meat product.
From the Arby's website, under "printable ingredients list"
Roast Beef: Trimmed Boneless Beef Chunks (Minimum 70%) Combined With Chopped Beef For a Maximum of 12% Fat. Contains up to 9.0% of a Self-Basting Solution of Water, Salt, Sodium Phosphate.
It looks a lot like spam when we used to cut it out of the plastic wrap.
You call those sloppy pale mini-sticks “fries”?
Here’s how real fries look like: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.gentoo%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&um=1&sa=1&q=belgische+frieten&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0 :)
Belgian fries. In my opinion the best fries in the world. Especially if made with eastern-European potatoes (those that still taste like potatoes). If you ever get there, try them.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is changing. Two of the McDonalds establishments in my (US) town recently remodelled, and now have not only padding on their seats, but a pair of cushy, lounge-ish chairs with a low table, near a window with a view.
You're just acclimated. Their fries suck. You want good fries? Buy some potatos and some cooking oil, slice the potatos (leave the skins on, that's where most of the vitamins are) and fry 'em. Puts McDonald's AND Burger King to shame (even though Burger King has better fries AND burgers).
Free Martian Whores!
By blocking ports and protocols related to VPN. Blocking all outbound tcp/1723 as well as GRE will block most PPTP traffic, blocking all outbound udp/4500, udp/500, ESP and AH will block most IPSec traffic, blocking all outbound udp/1701 will block most L2TP traffic just in case it isn't secured by IPSec in the first place. Decent firewalls can inspect HTTP traffic and make sure you're not using it to tunnel traffic. HTTPS traffic can be dropped once the connection has passed more traffic than you think could reasonably be a webpage, and so on.
Can you find some way around those rules if you know what you're doing? Sure. But it's not particularly hard to make sure 99% of all users you're going to come across are not going to be able to use VPN without significant outside help.
Uhh... those pretty much look the same as McDonald's. But Burger King's do stink. Regardless, I'm intelligent enough to realize that others' tastes may vary from mine.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
In their early years, Arby's was decent (not great though). Back "in the good old days", they used "real" roast beef rather than than the press formed crap they use today.
When I was a kid, our family would eat at Arby's fairly often (probably two or three times a month) and one day we noticed the sandwiches didn't taste very good. We went back one more time with the same result. We inquired and were told that they had switched to a "processed" roast beef - and the store manager actually seemed quite proud of this "new improvement". Our family never ate at an Arby's again.
I think they switched sometime in the very late 60's - so, since they were founded in 1964 (at least according to their web site), they didn't stick with real meat very long.
Out of misguided curiosity (or possibly a masochistic streak), I ate at an Arby's about ten years ago as I figured that if they were still in business they must have gone back to "real" meat (or something closer to it at least). It turns out my powers of deduction were incorrect and I think the "meat" product was even worse than it had been (but maybe my palette is just a bit more refined now).
Now, get off my lawn.