Okay, I'm the author of the Ars Technica piece, and that make me laugh.
Talking to the researcher, Eggleton, made my head slightly explode, because he's looking 5 to 20 years into the future with the research he's on top of today.
But they have practical devices that show that the stuff can be hand-built, and that's what blows my mind.
I had a briefing from RSA about this survey (writing it up for Ars Technica), and the wardriving that was done was not for the purpose of counting. Rather, it was a subsample of the city: a route that went through business and residential neighborhoods, and that has been driven consistently in London for 4 years. The same route in Paris has been driven for 4 years, and in New York for 7 years.
Um...I wrote the article, Space Cowboy? This article was revised after initially being posted as I received more information. Dan Kaminsky is the only one who currently knows the full scope of client weakness, but it's out there, so we revised our article to be clearer about the known knowns and the known unknowns!
HD Radio sort of slipped through the RIAA net. There's no encryption, and there's no broadcast flag. But radio makers aren't interested in you recording digital radio; all the radios I've looked at have analog only output, not even TOSlink optical digital (correct me anyone knows of such a unit).
Huge delays in low-power HD Radio chips have prevented there from being much HD Radio gear on the market, too. The folks at Griffin promised an HD Radio RadioShark, their USB receiver, which would ostensibly allow direct digital recording, but no ETA on that.
Right, because 10 million people aren't buying new iPhones this year and they don't need to know that there's an alternative to paying SMS fees! Thank goodness, that those 10 million people wouldn't be bothered with this useful information. (Writes the guy who submitted the story, but did not write it.)
There's a terrible Slashdot confusion here in comments. Vinh was saying that they hand code templates (i.e., code HTML using their own token language interspersed). I wrote about the rise of credibility once again for handcoding, and the problems that templating causes for GUI tools in this article at TidBITS. The summary is that all database-driven systems use templates; GUI tools are bad at previewing CMS-based database-driven templates.
Dekortage thanks for quoting this. I was about to myself.
Yahoo PR emailed me the "unlimited" press release. I immediately set about finding the unlimited terms, which are not noted in the lengthy terms of service, and which required several clicks to find.
While I appreciate Yahoo wanting people to not game a truly unlimited service, there's a difference between defining proper usage and defining abuse. In this case, they are offering no reasonable and dependable guidelines for a business to host itself with Yahoo without the business always worrying that they are "growing too fast." Whatever that means.
Yahoo could have cast this in terms of what abuse meant, and said, we won't cut you off unless you're engaged in specific abusive behavior, list follows.
I mean, if they're saying that 100 MB uploaded initially is too much or that adding 100 MB is too fast, that's going to be a problem for a business that hosts a lot of images. If it's 2 GB initially and 2 GB per month, that's probably fine, but why not state it?
I haven't used Arrow Bay, but I have done extensive checking on hosting services that provide shared and dedicated content. The services that people recommend always have explicit details on what is provided; the ones that don't lack these details.
It took Apple a few years to buckle down and actually publish their storage/throughput limits. Now they regularly increase them.
It's a great point. In some cases, EarthLink had won a bid, but not started contract negotiations. In some cases, a contract was on the table, but not signed. In some cases, a contract was completed, but the city hadn't executed it (often, a mayor works out the details and a council approves it, and then a utility has to be involved to agree to pole uses).
Where a contract is in place, EarthLink will have to unwind its obligations. In Houston, it paid $5m for not starting the network. In Philadelphia, they will likely pay out millions to walk away.
The comment on this linked article isn't on the mark. Cisco is specifically releasing a device that's got firmware based on Draft 2.0 from Task Group N, which has been certified as an interim release by the Wi-Fi Alliance. What all that means is that Cisco and other firms had to go through lab-based (not just plugfest-based) interoperability and conformance testing to get the Draft N Wi-Fi label. That's the baseline for the next year to 18 months for what 802.11n will look like. That's a far cry from Cisco just denigrating 802.11n's current state; they certainly didn't think it was ready several months ago (and it wasn't).
Whenever I've had double opt-in list or even paid-subscriber list mail bounced by AOL or had servers blacklisted, no explanation they have ever given me nor any instructions they have provided have proved accurate or helpful. I expect there are smart people in the middle, and cheap tech support with scripts on the edge. Probably demoralized now, too, because they're going to lose their jobs any day as AOL continues to shed operations and outsource to even cheaper, less helpful people.
By contrast, I had a problem with a mailing of 3,200 that's tied to blog postings (the list is just an exploder to double opt-in subscribers) with Yahoo, and I posted a note on my blog about it. Within hours, i had received two separate responses from people at Yahoo offering to help. I provided information they needed, they fixed the problem, and we were all done.
This is so not news. The Wall Street Journal article got a number of details plain wrong.
I wrote extensively about the auctions last summer and AirCell's plan. I checked with AirCell this morning: cell phone service has nothing to do with their short-term interest, and they think it's at best a long-term possibility, but not one they're basing their business on. Here's my interview with the CEO from last June after they won the FCC auction.
Further, on the issues raised here about Boeing's "success" with Connexion, that service required days of installation time, their gear weighed 800 pounds, the antenna added drag, and they had leases for satellite transponders. AirCell is using ground-to-air spectrum via their own ground stations with a lightweight package and little drag that installs fast (overnight).
You're right. (Although the BSSID is not equal to the SSID. The BSSID is typically the MAC address of the Wi-Fi system in the gateway; the SSID is default or human-set text.)
However, if someone chooses to expose their identity in the SSID, then aren't they making a statement already about their concern for privacy? I used to label our network with our street address, but my wife asked me to change it. It's now Generic Home Network. Actually, after a change in setup, it's Generic Heim Netzwerk.
Here's what I wrote to the fine person who wrote the linked article, who I respect enormously, but think got it wrong in this case:
First, and sort of a priori, Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum. The use of that spectrum means that you accept (however unknowingly, your point!) that any use treads in the public space. There are ways to reduce the signal strength of many Wi-Fi gateways if you want to penetrate further.
Second, what they're gathering is just a number (the BSSID, which is the unique base station identifier for networks that are set to broadcast). They do not access the network. And they can't provide any kind of exact correlation. Nor is there a way to associate BSSIDs with individuals or addresses in their system or elsewhere. (It's also not all home networks; there are millions and millions of business networks also being recorded.)
Third, their data is their crown jewel. They have every interest in protecting it in the strongest possible ways. The information they release is a set of coordinates based on signals measured and sent via their system. So you can't really perform millions of arbitrary queries, but rather only queries mediated through their software. This limits exposure.
So you have no specific information based on public use of public spectrum and strong needs to protect the data against unwanted access...
Sounds fairly reasonable to me.
If they started pairing individual addresses with BSSIDs, and sold that to Wi-Fi makers and others who would then perform direct mailings to users to get them to switch brands or add security -- that would be creepy.
The expungement order requires that the FBI and other authorities be notified that the felonies are expunged. Now, I don't want to pretend that the system works, and thus his records won't show up in the wrong place in the wrong way.
But I'm very happy for Randal. I exchanged some email with him after I was made aware of the news, and wrote up an account at TidBITS. I had written a letter supporting a pardon to the Oregon governor a few years ago, and was delighted that his day out of court has finally arrived.
Please note that while iLounge's article is interesting, it's based on two unnamed Apple representatives, quoted without their position at the company being mentioned. This is fine, but let's not take this as an official Apple position or statement.
I'm a regular print and online journalist, so I asked Apple about the $5 charge. They said they don't comment on rumors and speculation, and repeated that the updater would be available on the CD with the new AirPort Extreme update that will ship in February.
To me, that's like saying, "hint, hint." The CD will have an unlocked updater that can be used with any compatible Core 2 Duo or Xeon Macintosh. Thus, Apple may or may not have a Sarbanes-Oxley issue (stranger things have happened), and they may or may not charge $5 for the updater. Nonetheless, an unlocked "enabler" application will be in the hands of thousands of early purchasers (like myself).
I've written more about this on my Wi-Fi blog in a post about why I think the $5 charge is unlikely, but unnecessary for anyone to pay even if it's attempted to be levied.
Emirates said months ago that they were going to add this service, which uses an on-board picocell and relays calls very expensively very satellite. Should run at least US$2.50 per minute for calls. I wrote about this in The Economist back in September (not Emirates news): RyanAir will launch in-flight calling by the second half of 2007 on hundreds of its planes. That will be the first major deployment.
It's tricky here because Maynor/Ellch made statements to Brian Krebs about it being a native exploit. They haven't repudiated that, and they won't comment on it. Apple's statement was about the "evidence" that Apple had received, which, at the time Apple made the statement was -- if you trust a multi-billion-dollar company familiar with shareholder lawsuits -- not evidence of an exploit.
The issue now is that Ellch won't (says he can't) talk about the Apple stuff, but says Apple will release a patch. But then he tries to bitch slap John Gruber who has put up $1,099 plus tax of his money in the proposition that without revealing any source code Ellch or Maynor would 0wn a stock MacBook.
Ellch is trying to push around the real issue here. He claims to not have been savvy enough to manipulate coverage or play with the story. Doesn't seem like it to me. He's really good at redirection and misdirection.
Ellch misdirects attention very clearly. The "Mac bloggers," which include a lot of non-Mac bloggers, have generally said, look, if what Ellch and Maynor showed Brian Krebs is true, then just demonstrate the real Apple exploit without revealing details.
The article above states, "He also went on to explain that while the debate was centered in the Mac blogger community, it made no sense to discuss it because most of them wouldn't understand the explanation if he gave it, adding, "Since this conversation has moved into a venue of people who can actually grasp the details of this, I'm ready to start saying something." "
Thanks for the condescension! It's not necessary. I will note that no one sensible, including myself (over at wifinetnews.com) has asked for the code. Rather, we've asked for Maynor and Ellch to either state that they mislead Brian Krebs, that Apple lied when they stated the company wasn't presented with credible evidence, or that they have material that Krebs saw and Apple hadn't seen yet.
John Gruber did a face-off, not asking for the code, but asking for a simple demonstration with a $1,099 plus sales tax prize.
How does Gruber not understand the technical details when he isn't asking for them? He's asking for a black-box showdown.
Unfortunately, some of the coverage of this air-to-ground spectrum auction has had the wrong information and led to the wrong conclusions. I've been writing about this at Wi-Fi Networking News since early last year, and have covered the auction since its start in early May. Here's the real scoop. (You can read my run down of these auctions over at my Wi-Fi site. I was quoted in last week's Associated Press article on these auctions and on public radio's Marketplace early this week.)
First, it's not about Wi-Fi, it's about air-to-ground broadband. More on that in a second.
Second, JetBlue won the smaller of two licenses sold at auction.
Third, it'll be up to two years before service commences.
The auction determined which of three exclusive spectrum configurations would win out. The winning versions was 3 MHz to AC BidCo LLC, a sister company with AirCell, and 1 MHz to JetBlue. The 3 MHz license was widely seen as the desirable one because using standard EVDO Rev. A, there should be over 1.5 Mbps available in each direction. (The FCC designed the new licenses to handle EVDO and a few other standards, and the allotted spectrum is split symmetrically in air-to-ground and ground-to-air segments.)
JetBlue, the owners of license winners LiveTV, will likely use its approximately 500 Kbps downstream to carry streaming video or to spool video for inflight use through cached content. Upstream could be used for cabin surveillance and aircraft use. JetBlue might roll out this technology to other airlines.
AirCell already runs a general aviation (non-commercial) air-station network for in-flight broadband, and will be able now to cut deals with all the major airlines that want this. Their ultimate system should be lightweight (thus not a big fuel drag) and desirable.
Wi-Fi has to be tested separately, by the way. They won't be able to just turn this on. The FCC and FAA will require them to test their equipment with specific airlines and planes in order to roll it out.
With dual-mode cell phones (cell + Wi-Fi) plus Skype and other VoIP services on laptops plus Wi-Fi-only handsets, it will be likely that calling in flight will be very common.
The other part of this deal is that Verizon AirFone, which controls parts of the 4 MHz that was auctioned off, now has up to two years to move from 4 MHz to a vertically polarized 1 MHz (overlapping with LiveTV's license). License winners are allowed to give Verizon financial incentives to move faster. AirFone is on 4,500 planes, including government ones, and is highly underused. With this move to new equipment, AirFone might dramatically drop its pricing...or airlines might ask for the equipment to be entirely removed.
The Xinhua report is particularly odd because it says China "launched a case," which implies legal action, possibly in an international venue. But if you read on, they filed two appeals alleging ethical violations. These violations, according to reports over the last few months, include people suggesting that unless China publishes their entire specification for WAPI, that there might be elements in the standard that enable backdoors, etc. China doesn't want to publish but they want to be a standard. That's a problem.
I've been writing about this for years over at Wi-Fi Networking News, and what's interesting is that when I suggest a Chinese government sponsored proprietary standard might have the ability to be tapped very easily, I get a lot of interesting comments posted about how I'm paranoid. Today's post on this set of appeals has seen a good mix of comments.
The article (and Slashdot intro) make it clear that St. Cloud is the first CITY not first COMPANY to offer free citywide service. MetroFi started as a paid service, started testing free a few months ago, and then switched to ad-supported free service as an option; you can pay a monthly rate if you want no ads at all.
First, EFF doesn't always lose. That's a gross mischaracterization of their efforts.
Second, sometimes losing is the only way to cast in stark relief deep efforts by companies to hide what they're doing. This will (eventually) produce a change only if citizens want their rights back and elect folks who campaign (however cynically) on that matter. It's not important to constituents on the whole yet. Hollywood's contributions are laughably small in the scale of things.
Third, the Newmark v. lawsuit that I was part of to preserve consumer rights in the ReplayTV lawsuit, established a precedent even though we didn't "win." The suit was eventually settled by ReplayTV's buyer (the company that bought the product line out of bankruptcy of the parent firm), but the judge in the case allowed us as consumers to join a lawsuit in which consumer rights were threatened. Thank you, EFF.
You missed my flywheels reference! See the Wired article in May 2000 (it's free online) that talks about the future of flywheels as battery replacements. It's not that far out there that you could have a tiny windwheel and a tiny flywheel that would provide enough storage for a day's worth of power, say.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I'm the author of the Ars Technica piece, and that make me laugh.
Talking to the researcher, Eggleton, made my head slightly explode, because he's looking 5 to 20 years into the future with the research he's on top of today.
But they have practical devices that show that the stuff can be hand-built, and that's what blows my mind.
The future isn't in plastics -- it's in glass!
I had a briefing from RSA about this survey (writing it up for Ars Technica), and the wardriving that was done was not for the purpose of counting. Rather, it was a subsample of the city: a route that went through business and residential neighborhoods, and that has been driven consistently in London for 4 years. The same route in Paris has been driven for 4 years, and in New York for 7 years.
Um...I wrote the article, Space Cowboy? This article was revised after initially being posted as I received more information. Dan Kaminsky is the only one who currently knows the full scope of client weakness, but it's out there, so we revised our article to be clearer about the known knowns and the known unknowns!
HD Radio sort of slipped through the RIAA net. There's no encryption, and there's no broadcast flag. But radio makers aren't interested in you recording digital radio; all the radios I've looked at have analog only output, not even TOSlink optical digital (correct me anyone knows of such a unit).
Huge delays in low-power HD Radio chips have prevented there from being much HD Radio gear on the market, too. The folks at Griffin promised an HD Radio RadioShark, their USB receiver, which would ostensibly allow direct digital recording, but no ETA on that.
Right, because 10 million people aren't buying new iPhones this year and they don't need to know that there's an alternative to paying SMS fees! Thank goodness, that those 10 million people wouldn't be bothered with this useful information. (Writes the guy who submitted the story, but did not write it.)
There's a terrible Slashdot confusion here in comments. Vinh was saying that they hand code templates (i.e., code HTML using their own token language interspersed). I wrote about the rise of credibility once again for handcoding, and the problems that templating causes for GUI tools in this article at TidBITS. The summary is that all database-driven systems use templates; GUI tools are bad at previewing CMS-based database-driven templates.
Dekortage thanks for quoting this. I was about to myself.
Yahoo PR emailed me the "unlimited" press release. I immediately set about finding the unlimited terms, which are not noted in the lengthy terms of service, and which required several clicks to find.
While I appreciate Yahoo wanting people to not game a truly unlimited service, there's a difference between defining proper usage and defining abuse. In this case, they are offering no reasonable and dependable guidelines for a business to host itself with Yahoo without the business always worrying that they are "growing too fast." Whatever that means.
Yahoo could have cast this in terms of what abuse meant, and said, we won't cut you off unless you're engaged in specific abusive behavior, list follows.
I mean, if they're saying that 100 MB uploaded initially is too much or that adding 100 MB is too fast, that's going to be a problem for a business that hosts a lot of images. If it's 2 GB initially and 2 GB per month, that's probably fine, but why not state it?
I haven't used Arrow Bay, but I have done extensive checking on hosting services that provide shared and dedicated content. The services that people recommend always have explicit details on what is provided; the ones that don't lack these details.
It took Apple a few years to buckle down and actually publish their storage/throughput limits. Now they regularly increase them.
The only payout I'm aware of is in Houston, and it wasn't for that reason. Where else?
It's a great point. In some cases, EarthLink had won a bid, but not started contract negotiations. In some cases, a contract was on the table, but not signed. In some cases, a contract was completed, but the city hadn't executed it (often, a mayor works out the details and a council approves it, and then a utility has to be involved to agree to pole uses).
Where a contract is in place, EarthLink will have to unwind its obligations. In Houston, it paid $5m for not starting the network. In Philadelphia, they will likely pay out millions to walk away.
The comment on this linked article isn't on the mark. Cisco is specifically releasing a device that's got firmware based on Draft 2.0 from Task Group N, which has been certified as an interim release by the Wi-Fi Alliance. What all that means is that Cisco and other firms had to go through lab-based (not just plugfest-based) interoperability and conformance testing to get the Draft N Wi-Fi label. That's the baseline for the next year to 18 months for what 802.11n will look like. That's a far cry from Cisco just denigrating 802.11n's current state; they certainly didn't think it was ready several months ago (and it wasn't).
Damn, I wanted to make that joke. Mine was shorter: "The Nazis have won."
Whenever I've had double opt-in list or even paid-subscriber list mail bounced by AOL or had servers blacklisted, no explanation they have ever given me nor any instructions they have provided have proved accurate or helpful. I expect there are smart people in the middle, and cheap tech support with scripts on the edge. Probably demoralized now, too, because they're going to lose their jobs any day as AOL continues to shed operations and outsource to even cheaper, less helpful people.
By contrast, I had a problem with a mailing of 3,200 that's tied to blog postings (the list is just an exploder to double opt-in subscribers) with Yahoo, and I posted a note on my blog about it. Within hours, i had received two separate responses from people at Yahoo offering to help. I provided information they needed, they fixed the problem, and we were all done.
This is so not news. The Wall Street Journal article got a number of details plain wrong.
I wrote extensively about the auctions last summer and AirCell's plan. I checked with AirCell this morning: cell phone service has nothing to do with their short-term interest, and they think it's at best a long-term possibility, but not one they're basing their business on. Here's my interview with the CEO from last June after they won the FCC auction.
Further, on the issues raised here about Boeing's "success" with Connexion, that service required days of installation time, their gear weighed 800 pounds, the antenna added drag, and they had leases for satellite transponders. AirCell is using ground-to-air spectrum via their own ground stations with a lightweight package and little drag that installs fast (overnight).
You're right. (Although the BSSID is not equal to the SSID. The BSSID is typically the MAC address of the Wi-Fi system in the gateway; the SSID is default or human-set text.)
However, if someone chooses to expose their identity in the SSID, then aren't they making a statement already about their concern for privacy? I used to label our network with our street address, but my wife asked me to change it. It's now Generic Home Network. Actually, after a change in setup, it's Generic Heim Netzwerk.
Here's what I wrote to the fine person who wrote the linked article, who I respect enormously, but think got it wrong in this case:
First, and sort of a priori, Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum. The use of that spectrum means that you accept (however unknowingly, your point!) that any use treads in the public space. There are ways to reduce the signal strength of many Wi-Fi gateways if you want to penetrate further.
Second, what they're gathering is just a number (the BSSID, which is the unique base station identifier for networks that are set to broadcast). They do not access the network. And they can't provide any kind of exact correlation. Nor is there a way to associate BSSIDs with individuals or addresses in their system or elsewhere. (It's also not all home networks; there are millions and millions of business networks also being recorded.)
Third, their data is their crown jewel. They have every interest in protecting it in the strongest possible ways. The information they release is a set of coordinates based on signals measured and sent via their system. So you can't really perform millions of arbitrary queries, but rather only queries mediated through their software. This limits exposure.
So you have no specific information based on public use of public spectrum and strong needs to protect the data against unwanted access...
Sounds fairly reasonable to me.
If they started pairing individual addresses with BSSIDs, and sold that to Wi-Fi makers and others who would then perform direct mailings to users to get them to switch brands or add security -- that would be creepy.
The expungement order requires that the FBI and other authorities be notified that the felonies are expunged. Now, I don't want to pretend that the system works, and thus his records won't show up in the wrong place in the wrong way.
But I'm very happy for Randal. I exchanged some email with him after I was made aware of the news, and wrote up an account at TidBITS. I had written a letter supporting a pardon to the Oregon governor a few years ago, and was delighted that his day out of court has finally arrived.
Please note that while iLounge's article is interesting, it's based on two unnamed Apple representatives, quoted without their position at the company being mentioned. This is fine, but let's not take this as an official Apple position or statement. I'm a regular print and online journalist, so I asked Apple about the $5 charge. They said they don't comment on rumors and speculation, and repeated that the updater would be available on the CD with the new AirPort Extreme update that will ship in February. To me, that's like saying, "hint, hint." The CD will have an unlocked updater that can be used with any compatible Core 2 Duo or Xeon Macintosh. Thus, Apple may or may not have a Sarbanes-Oxley issue (stranger things have happened), and they may or may not charge $5 for the updater. Nonetheless, an unlocked "enabler" application will be in the hands of thousands of early purchasers (like myself). I've written more about this on my Wi-Fi blog in a post about why I think the $5 charge is unlikely, but unnecessary for anyone to pay even if it's attempted to be levied.
Emirates said months ago that they were going to add this service, which uses an on-board picocell and relays calls very expensively very satellite. Should run at least US$2.50 per minute for calls. I wrote about this in The Economist back in September (not Emirates news): RyanAir will launch in-flight calling by the second half of 2007 on hundreds of its planes. That will be the first major deployment.
It's tricky here because Maynor/Ellch made statements to Brian Krebs about it being a native exploit. They haven't repudiated that, and they won't comment on it. Apple's statement was about the "evidence" that Apple had received, which, at the time Apple made the statement was -- if you trust a multi-billion-dollar company familiar with shareholder lawsuits -- not evidence of an exploit.
The issue now is that Ellch won't (says he can't) talk about the Apple stuff, but says Apple will release a patch. But then he tries to bitch slap John Gruber who has put up $1,099 plus tax of his money in the proposition that without revealing any source code Ellch or Maynor would 0wn a stock MacBook.
Ellch is trying to push around the real issue here. He claims to not have been savvy enough to manipulate coverage or play with the story. Doesn't seem like it to me. He's really good at redirection and misdirection.
Ellch misdirects attention very clearly. The "Mac bloggers," which include a lot of non-Mac bloggers, have generally said, look, if what Ellch and Maynor showed Brian Krebs is true, then just demonstrate the real Apple exploit without revealing details.
The article above states, "He also went on to explain that while the debate was centered in the Mac blogger community, it made no sense to discuss it because most of them wouldn't understand the explanation if he gave it, adding, "Since this conversation has moved into a venue of people who can actually grasp the details of this, I'm ready to start saying something." "
Thanks for the condescension! It's not necessary. I will note that no one sensible, including myself (over at wifinetnews.com) has asked for the code. Rather, we've asked for Maynor and Ellch to either state that they mislead Brian Krebs, that Apple lied when they stated the company wasn't presented with credible evidence, or that they have material that Krebs saw and Apple hadn't seen yet.
John Gruber did a face-off, not asking for the code, but asking for a simple demonstration with a $1,099 plus sales tax prize.
How does Gruber not understand the technical details when he isn't asking for them? He's asking for a black-box showdown.
Unfortunately, some of the coverage of this air-to-ground spectrum auction has had the wrong information and led to the wrong conclusions. I've been writing about this at Wi-Fi Networking News since early last year, and have covered the auction since its start in early May. Here's the real scoop. (You can read my run down of these auctions over at my Wi-Fi site. I was quoted in last week's Associated Press article on these auctions and on public radio's Marketplace early this week.)
First, it's not about Wi-Fi, it's about air-to-ground broadband. More on that in a second.
Second, JetBlue won the smaller of two licenses sold at auction.
Third, it'll be up to two years before service commences.
The auction determined which of three exclusive spectrum configurations would win out. The winning versions was 3 MHz to AC BidCo LLC, a sister company with AirCell, and 1 MHz to JetBlue. The 3 MHz license was widely seen as the desirable one because using standard EVDO Rev. A, there should be over 1.5 Mbps available in each direction. (The FCC designed the new licenses to handle EVDO and a few other standards, and the allotted spectrum is split symmetrically in air-to-ground and ground-to-air segments.)
JetBlue, the owners of license winners LiveTV, will likely use its approximately 500 Kbps downstream to carry streaming video or to spool video for inflight use through cached content. Upstream could be used for cabin surveillance and aircraft use. JetBlue might roll out this technology to other airlines.
AirCell already runs a general aviation (non-commercial) air-station network for in-flight broadband, and will be able now to cut deals with all the major airlines that want this. Their ultimate system should be lightweight (thus not a big fuel drag) and desirable.
Wi-Fi has to be tested separately, by the way. They won't be able to just turn this on. The FCC and FAA will require them to test their equipment with specific airlines and planes in order to roll it out.
With dual-mode cell phones (cell + Wi-Fi) plus Skype and other VoIP services on laptops plus Wi-Fi-only handsets, it will be likely that calling in flight will be very common.
The other part of this deal is that Verizon AirFone, which controls parts of the 4 MHz that was auctioned off, now has up to two years to move from 4 MHz to a vertically polarized 1 MHz (overlapping with LiveTV's license). License winners are allowed to give Verizon financial incentives to move faster. AirFone is on 4,500 planes, including government ones, and is highly underused. With this move to new equipment, AirFone might dramatically drop its pricing...or airlines might ask for the equipment to be entirely removed.
The Xinhua report is particularly odd because it says China "launched a case," which implies legal action, possibly in an international venue. But if you read on, they filed two appeals alleging ethical violations. These violations, according to reports over the last few months, include people suggesting that unless China publishes their entire specification for WAPI, that there might be elements in the standard that enable backdoors, etc. China doesn't want to publish but they want to be a standard. That's a problem.
I've been writing about this for years over at Wi-Fi Networking News, and what's interesting is that when I suggest a Chinese government sponsored proprietary standard might have the ability to be tapped very easily, I get a lot of interesting comments posted about how I'm paranoid. Today's post on this set of appeals has seen a good mix of comments.
The article (and Slashdot intro) make it clear that St. Cloud is the first CITY not first COMPANY to offer free citywide service. MetroFi started as a paid service, started testing free a few months ago, and then switched to ad-supported free service as an option; you can pay a monthly rate if you want no ads at all.
First, EFF doesn't always lose. That's a gross mischaracterization of their efforts.
Second, sometimes losing is the only way to cast in stark relief deep efforts by companies to hide what they're doing. This will (eventually) produce a change only if citizens want their rights back and elect folks who campaign (however cynically) on that matter. It's not important to constituents on the whole yet. Hollywood's contributions are laughably small in the scale of things.
Third, the Newmark v. lawsuit that I was part of to preserve consumer rights in the ReplayTV lawsuit, established a precedent even though we didn't "win." The suit was eventually settled by ReplayTV's buyer (the company that bought the product line out of bankruptcy of the parent firm), but the judge in the case allowed us as consumers to join a lawsuit in which consumer rights were threatened. Thank you, EFF.
You missed my flywheels reference! See the Wired article in May 2000 (it's free online) that talks about the future of flywheels as battery replacements. It's not that far out there that you could have a tiny windwheel and a tiny flywheel that would provide enough storage for a day's worth of power, say.