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London's Mayor Promises London-Wide Wireless For 2012 Olympics

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-a-commie-from-here dept.

Pax681 writes "[London Mayor] Boris Johnson declared that London will have all bus stops and lamp posts Wi-Fi enabled by 2012 for the Olympics. In an article on Tech Eye, Boris waxes lyrical (or as lyrical as he can get) about how it would be done at a Google Zeitgeist event in Hertfordshire. These would be public Wi-Fi hotpots; as such, would these break the new law on open access points? Would they be just the thing for people to use to infringe with impunity and anonymously bypass the chances of running foul of the Digital Economy Act?"

4 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Someone needs to by OrwellianLurker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Someone needs to pirate the Olympics on this wireless.

    --
    'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
  2. How long will Digital Britain last? by Landak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To the joy of nerds everywhere in the UK, it seems like the Digital Britain bill might not last very long with the current Government.

    Whether or not Cameron and the conservatives can splinter away from Murdoch enough to let this happen remains to be seen, but I am currently naive enough to be genuinely optimistic about the results of having liberals in power for the first time in over a century.

    --
    My UID is prime. Is yours?
    1. Re:How long will Digital Britain last? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don’t seem to know how politicians work:
      1. Do a couple of speeches or something in front of whoever you want to take over.
      2. “Promise” some things, anything, doesn’t matter if it’s even physically possible, let alone sensible, that those people really want.
      3. Link whatever you (or rather your “shareholders”) want as a precondition to that promise.
      4. Use the people to get that precondition trough in parliament.
      5. Forget about the original “promise”.
      6. Find a “scandal” (something those people really do not want) to get them to hate the opposition again, be distracted and forget about what you did.
      7. Rinse, repeat.

      Real professionals make up the things, that those people think they want, themselves. E.g. by inventing non-existing dangers with the use of their media outlets. This also makes it much easier to void the “promise”, since you don’t need to fix something that never existed in the first place. Your “promise” already was fulfilled from the start.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  3. Re:Has Boris thought.... by __Reason__ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    how many lamp-posts there are in London?

    There's approximately 20,500 bus stops in Greater London - I have a database (NaPTAN) of them. I'd estimate there's as least 50 lamp posts for every bus stop. So, thats over 1,000,000 WiFI access points to be rolled out by 2012! Wow!