Slashdot Mirror
London Installing Largest Free Wifi Network
aesoteric writes "London's Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea districts will be delivered the largest free wi-fi zone in Europe. The plan is to provide the service in time for the 2012 London Olympics, which start in late July, to allow visitors and residents to get more out of their stay."
Read the fine print when you agree to their terms of service.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I'm guessing it won't be anonymous.
...that it's not just for theur CCTV cameras? I'm pretty sure that China has a similar WiFi setup.
I hope they keep it up afterwards. It'd be nice to be able to use google voice / skype / other VOIP solutions on my smartphone instead of paying obscene international roaming charges or screwing around jailbreaking and getting local sim cards.
This is going to blow up (in the funny sort of way) when someone downloads CP on this network or harasses some kid on FB. It'd be even crazier if they left it entirely unsecured and someone showed up with firesheep.
Hillarity aside, this could actually drive home the point that an IP address != an identity.
People can fly from all over the world for two bloody weeks of "games," but G-d forbid they buy a sim or pay for connectivity. All the while, the rest of England get fuck all.
Seriously, a MAC address?
Hahahah.
Like a Mac Address cannot be spoofed, cannot be varied, cannot be transferred through exchangeable USB WiFi sticks, or even through a hot spot that bridges to the MuWiFi.
I guess they had to do something with all that bloody congestion charge money.
T minus one week: Everyone scrambles to get the network up and running.
T minus one hour: Large news event, hosted by the BBC, to throw the ceremonial comedically large switch.
T minus zero: Network is live. Cheers occur.
T plus one second: Twitchy, caffeine-addled basement dweller discovers this network will not enable him to download his 58PB of pirated anime porn every month like he thought* he would be able to.
T plus one-point-five seconds: Blog post goes up.
T plus two seconds: Echo chamber agrees, internet declares service to be utterly without merit, useless, and a direct affront to freedom because of this.
T plus five seconds: Someone discovers someone else somewhere might be looking at them while they use the wireless network, immediate accusations of government spying start, numerous ill-informed references to Nineteen Eighty-Four permeate discussion.
T plus five-point-five seconds: Blog post goes up.
T plus six seconds: Echo chamber agrees, internet declares service to be utterly without merit, useless, and a direct affront to freedom because of this.
T plus ten seconds: Cloistered, sheltered nerd sits in complete befuddlement, absolutely baffled as to why on earth anyone would have any objections to him hosting his array of torrents on this network, sucking down every last slice of bandwidth available.
T plus ten-point-five seconds: Blog post goes up.
T plus eleven seconds: Echo chamber agrees, internet declares service to be utterly without merit, useless, and a direct affront to freedom because of this.
*: By which I mean "deluded himself into believing".
I read that as "Wifi Free" at first and thought the "wifi causes cancer" nutjobs had won...
Radio Free Europe
Use it for whatever you like.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Life goes on, and so do we,
Just how we do it is no mystery.
One by one (one by one), we fill the days,
We find a thousand different ways.
Sometimes the answer can be hard to find (hard to find),
That's something I will never be.
I'm always here, for anything you need (anything you need).
Rain or shine, I'll be the one,
to share it all as life goes on.
We share it all, as life goes on.
They're "boroughs", not "districts". Jeeze.
"to allow visitors and residents to get more out of their stay ..."
People who've invested their own time, money and effort into providing (and charging for) Wifi must be just thrilled that the council have given a private operator rights to erect equipment in public spaces right next to their premises that effectively kicks their product out of the market. Is the need for public Wifi that pressing that the council are being diverted from their normal duties like, you know, sweeping the streets?
Free to connect, but to use the internet, you'll need to pay.
a new tcp stack (modernized to 'share') and public airwaves?
"London Installing Largest Government-Run Honeypot"
Fixed that title for you
In Westminster alone, it could be providing internet access to half a million tourists each day, 250,000 residents and 500,000 workers.
Half a million of tourists - would they plan to ask for a "tourist id" for granting access?
They should just ask Singapore how Singapore handles it.
Wireless@SG works in most places I've tried it (Changi Airport, Orchid road). I get the code from the info booth at the airport, valid for 4 hours and wander around Singapore for a bit before my next flight. Handy for long stopovers. A beer in SG is expensive enough, doubly so in an airport (S$13 last time I was there).
The simple way would be registration via an email address, get a code for Wireless@LON for 14 days. Beyond this, SMS codes. seeing as these are captive portals, you regester to have an access code SMS'ed to any UK phone (probably work for any EU phone).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
For how long will it keep working before a lack of maintenance makes it go dark?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"in time for the London Olympics"... which takes place in the east of London, in Stratford, far from any of these boroughs.
Good point actually. Is something wrong in a country where you can't take a leak for free but you can access the internet for free?
Methinks yes. But that's me.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Wtf? Free wifi in a European country?! Does not compute. I was almost certain that "Free", "Insert any service here", and "" could NEVER coexist in the same sentence.... Go to London, pay eleventy pounds for parking, pay to use restroom, pay to breathe air, pay to blink eyes, pay to use sidewalk, but Wifi is now freeeee! Oh wait, only because of the Olympics.
The parking (and congestion) charges are to discourage car use. Many Londoners, including me, don't even own a car.
But there's plenty of free things to do in London -- more than any other city I've ever visited. Some great museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) at South Kensington are free. So is the British Museum, in Holborn. The Museum of London (in the City) is free, as is the Imperial War Museum (Lambeth). That's just the biggest ones, there are at least 20 more not-insignificant free museums.
There are markets, old buildings (cathedrals etc), big art galleries, parks, palaces, the river, theatre, many small gigs are free... and that's just the normal, year-round stuff. There should be free one-off events, though it's obviously worth planning if you want to see something in particular.
Try these websites:
http://www.visitlondon.com/tag/free-attractions
http://www.timeout.com/london/feature/1424/free-london
http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/free-london
http://londonist.com/tags/lotclist
In WWDC and other crowded spots where wifi usage is high, I've found that nothing works due to the sheer number of devices interfering with each other. I expect the Olympics will be similarly congested, especially in places where people are likely to want to congregate and use the devices (viewing areas etc).
Better than a country where if you are a man and take a leak in public you can be tried as a sex offender.
who is paying for this?
Just like the Olympics, most of the UK tax payers will not doubt be paying for this! I don't like sport yet I still have no choice but to watch my taxes be pissed away on this Olympics bollocks. Clegg and Cameron will get all the their mates snouts in the Olympic trough, including this WiFI malarky. Come the glorious fortnight I'm taking my tent up the Cairngorms and cutting all ties so I don't see, read or have to listen to any this Olympics cack!
The advertiser supported model was tried during the dot-com era and largely failed. Since there really is no such thing as free, I am guessing O2 is going to collect browsing habbits and information to resell to marketing companies in addition to advertisements. O2 might actually make more money by combining reselling user data and advertiser supported services.
As an East Ender, this is much more complex than that. Hackney has become very gentrified in parts and is full of new-media-tossers further south, also quite rich, but some parts are still dirt-poor. Tower Hamlets, my borough, contains Canary Wharf and many riverside yuppie-hutches to serve the banking 'community' AND national records for deprivation. Some bits of Kensington [north] and Westminster are poor. The only thing all this proves is that trickle-down economics certainly doesn't work.
I'm guessing, however, that all the hotspots will be in the 'nice' bits, so we proles don't pull them off the lamp posts and try and swallow them, our usual reaction to anything new.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Geez...
If it's like any wifi access point that's been provided at any other large event I've been to, it's so overly congested or limited that it's worthless to use. Easier to just use the 3G or whatever service is available through the phone network (if that is even usable).
The only saving grace I can see for it is if it's kept running after the crowds leave and gives some nice access to the residents of the area.
Unless you think the equipment to run the network, the cabling, the people to maintain it, electricity, etc cost nothing, it's not free.
In this case, it's the taxpayers of London (possibly the UK) who are footing the bill for this "free" service.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
St Paul's Cathedral, the largest and best known and arguably most important religious building in London is definitely not free to visitors.
It costs £15 to get in! I was so shocked that I just turned around and walked away.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
That's great that you, you know, live in London. As in, you can afford the outrageous cost of living there, and take what must be an exquisite pleasure to lecture the rest of us on transportation. I love how you recommend thieves' dens of stolen merchandise (you called them 'museums' I believe, an interesting bowdlerism if there ever was one) with a straight face.
Surely, being a well-heeled Londoner, you must be acquainted with the idea that if something is free, then it must be worthless. Otherwise, the Great Unwashed will be all over it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
St Paul's Cathedral, the largest and best known and arguably most important religious building in London is definitely not free to visitors.
It costs £15 to get in! I was so shocked that I just turned around and walked away.
Many of the free museums are funded by the state (or part-funded), either at national level or from more local taxes. Others are simple charities, or are run by universities (etc) for public education.
St Paul's Cathedral claims they don't get any state funding. I think that's OK, while the building is still used as a church, but I agree it's annoying for visitors.
I have paid to see major cathedrals in other European cities, although there are many that are free.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and reply courteously.
That's great that you, you know, live in London. As in, you can afford the outrageous cost of living there,
Other than housing, most essential costs aren't much different to the rest of the country (food, fuel, transport, etc). Socialising is more expensive, but outside the centre it's not that much more.
and take what must be an exquisite pleasure to lecture the rest of us on transportation.
You'll get a better experience of London if you use the public transport, rather than try and drive everywhere. Driving in London is frustrating -- it's difficult to find parking, there's a *lot* of traffic, the streets are narrow and dense, there are many one-way restrictions. That's the way things are here.
(Would it be lecturing to advise a European against taking Amtrak and buses round the USA, if they have a limited time for their trip?)
I love how you recommend thieves' dens of stolen merchandise (you called them 'museums' I believe, an interesting bowdlerism if there ever was one) with a straight face.
So don't visit the British Museum. The other museums have completely different collections. The Museum of London, for example, has artefacts from London, often from excavations, or donations.
Surely, being a well-heeled Londoner, you must be acquainted with the idea that if something is free, then it must be worthless. Otherwise, the Great Unwashed will be all over it.
You clearly don't know this city, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
The GP did have a point about paying to use a restroom in London. I've seen this at railway stations in London and Paris, and was quite surprised.
The GP did have a point about paying to use a restroom in London. I've seen this at railway stations in London and Paris, and was quite surprised.
Agreed. There are still some free public toilets, but a lot less than there used to be. Many have been replaced with a plastic "pod" thing, which charges 50p or something. (London isn't special here -- it's the same in much of England.)
I'm not sure what the thought is behind this. It just means more people piss in the street.
Why did that guy used to keep posting about a naked, petrified Natalie Portman and hot grits? Why do people still post lame "In Soviet Russia" jokes? Why does everyone yell "correlation!=causation" every time the word's mentioned?
No reason at all other than to make slashdot a special place with its own spots of insanity.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I've never paid to take a leak in London. Either go in a pub, or if you're desperate in a side alley. As mentioned in a post below, if you do the latter and get caught (which is unlikely unless you're so pissed you whip it out in front of a cop) at least you won't be branded a sex offender.
I wouldn't go in one of those automatically opening jobbies if you paid me.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The parking (and congestion) charges are to discourage car use. Many Londoners, including me, don't even own a car.
It is more or less impossible to drive to work or generally around London anyway (even if you live/work in the suburbs, certainly not if you need to get into the centre) . The cost is almost irrelevant, it's just that it's so slow you might as well walk.
The only times a car is useful in London are for big supermarket-type shopping (if there's one reasonably close and you're prepared to waste most of a weekend morning) or visiting people outside the capital.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and reply courteously.
Why bother? GP is either an idiot if you're being generous, or a troll if you're not.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38589290
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38589290
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38589290
You're a prick, did you know that?