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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!
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".
Depends on your hardware. Recent intel "centrino" wifi chips can not change their MACs- I found this out personally because the driver under linux lets you try to change the MAC, but if you try to use it with one of these new chips it just fails to work over the air.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I can no longer change my MAC address or spoof one? Since when?
A change of your MAC or IP is a criminal offence, remember, as every newborn you have an IPv6 in your birth certificate and screening profile attached to it from day one.
--Judge Dredd
They're "boroughs", not "districts". Jeeze.
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.
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