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Google Partnering With Indian Railways To Provide Wi-Fi Hotspots
An anonymous reader writes: Google and Indian Railways have partnered together for 'Project Nilgiri' which aims to set up more than 400 Wi-fi hotspots. IBTimes reports: "Internet access will be free for passengers after the system verifies a user's mobile number with a one-time password sent by text message. However, only the first 30 minutes of usage will be on high-speed Internet, Telecom Talk reported. The telecom industry news site has also posted a screen grab — that shows the service is being provided by Google — of the portal into which passengers have to enter the one-time access code."
those disgusting hoops "consumers" have to jump through (identify yourself and reveal your phone number in this case) make me ever more furious. Corporation's lust for consumer control and state's lust for surveillance make for a win-win-lose situation (two wolves and a sheep voting on who's for dinner, if you know what I mean).
Time for pitchforks?
But, to the millions in the Indian countryside with no access to the internet,
exploitation that brings connectivity is still preferential to interwebz darkness.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Whatever the case may be, only https traffic seems to be safe. All http traffic gets hijacked. From my non-jailbroken standard Google Nexus 5 android phone chrome browser, any link I access via http would randomly redirect to some redirec.xxx.yyy site from there another redirect and then another and I would get pop ups warning that there are viruses in my phone, something is out of date and random apk files get downloaded into the download folder. Lots of prompts to install. Happens to both Chrome and firefox in android.
From Windows 7 PC, a tab gets opened and random ads keep playing on it. Since there are pop-up blockers no warning pops up. But unless that random tab is left to exist, no other tab works. My brother's family have learned to leave that tab alone and use other tabs to browse. Most of the apps of my nephew does not work because any http request goes to such random malware sites
I reset the router and cleared the cache, changed the router password to non default values. Still the bad behavior continues. In the net tons and tons of complaints about this DNS hijacking.
Looks like the ISP is abusing a standard protocol used by hotels and other wifi providers who make you click on "I agree to the terms" before handing you over to a clean DNS server. Looks like BSNL never lets you off. It acts as man in the middle for all http traffic and injects its own ads and scripts into the requested pages. And what it injects seem to be the worst of the worst.
I got really scared when I found a fresh download of an apk file in Abu Dhabi airport wifi on my way back. I had done several reboots and cache clearing before. So far no new bad behavior on my phone. So I think I have not picked up any infection. Wondering how to really make sure.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So brace yourself buddies. If there is a systemic collapse of the current world order, may be due to climate change, may be due to financial instability or a global war, 90% of slashdotters will die of diseases leaving the world free to be conquered by the Indians. That is why I visit India every year to reinforce what little immunity I still have left.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The NSA can go right through the effing front door. Served on a silver platter.
After facebook zero, and net neutrality violations, we have this.
I will also give a small anecdote from the streets of Delhi. There are many bookshops from roadside vendors to small shops to huge bookstores. "The new digital age" - aka google's vision of the internet, is plastered on bookshelves everywhere. There is not even ONE book in most of these stores which discusses the opposite view.
The Indian PM is visiting Silicon Valley - esp Facebook for a town hall this month. In the quest for delivering on his "development" promise, he seems to be making a deal with the devil(s).
It is quite sad.
(Go ahead, mark me a troll...)
And yet, here in the US, we can't even manage to get reliable/functional wifi on amtrak.
Bottles.
I occasionally travel to Seattle from Portland, OR by train. Amtrak provide free wifi on the train. I have tried using it many many times, to do work while on the 3 hour ride. The wifi service is entirely useless and worthless. It is much much better to tether your computer to your phone and try to use that connection.
Part of the problem I think is wifi tech used by Amtrak. No 5GHz signal. The 2.4GHz signal gets saturated when more than a handful of people use it. All access points use the same frequency, etc. etc. They gave the contract to the lowest bidder or a buddy of the admin.
Google's wifi for the Indian Railway probably will be million times better than what we have here with Amtrak.
How about first ensuring clean toilets and a website where you can actually do something hassle-free?
Seriously.
If the ISP does deep packet inspection, blocks ports or protocols, prioritized or degrades certain classes of traffic, censors sites, messes with DNS or otherwise does something besides providing connectivity to the network, then the service shall not be called "Internet".
If users have to give up personal information, it is not "Free".
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
...before someone mentioned toilets or the lack of them, but nooooo. Think of India and the first thing that Slashdotters think of is toilets and then cows. Or is it cows and then toilets?
Surely, you do agree that (having all those problems + free wifi) > (having all those problems)? Even if the difference be only marginal?