[...] The lunacy of San Francisco politics can take several forms and town hall meetings are sure to attract some of San Francisco’s craziest nut jobs. While I was surprised not to see San Francisco’s representative from the 12 galaxies, Frank Chu, attend the meeting, I did get to see Chris Sacca from Google face a parade of activist oddballs who neither understood technology nor the positive social impact that free wifi could bring to some of the city’s most disadvantaged citizens. [...]
I have been following Google’s attempt to bring free wifi to San Francisco… and have been astounded at some of the issues they’ve had to undertake. But this Community Meeting Davis went to and wrote about takes the cake. I agree with him, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google just walks away.
Tags: Bay Area, Google, Interesting, Internet, Legal, Local, News, Politics
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Hi take a look at the comments on the Davis Freeberg post to learn a bit more about the issues at the meeting
thanks
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:48 pm
I did read about the issues, but a lot of what is being written is sorta ignoring how wifi works. There won’t be any overwhelming of already existing services… 802.11x doesn’t work that way. Also if you wish to surf on the network without being tracked then use tor… and some common sense. Look at the lessons from the Mountain View Project.
Offering a slow free service isn’t locking out people… it’s tempting people. And filling a place.
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:16 pm
If it’s going to a be a city solution - how about supporting the same level of privacy that one gets at the free public library?
What lessons do you feel SF can learn from Mountain View?
rather than “slow free” isn’t it more like “slow (or not at all), unreliable free”? won’t that in some cases, irritate rather than tempt?
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Well my public library has free wifi… with less privacy then Google’s plan. In that if you log in, you’ll find people scanning your PC… Zonealarm goes crazy. And I don’t know about the SF Public Library but a couple computer labs I saw had Google Browser bars helping with the searching (and sometimes other more intrusive snoops) so using wifi on your own self configured computer… seems more secure then the library.
If you let it come together you’ll find people finding it easier to find jobs online… more freedom to express themselves… since there are people how have computers, but hadn’t gotten internet access. Plus the access is pretty open. You need a Google account which a lot of people have… and that’s pretty much it. You can use Tor to hide your traffic, use ssh to encrypt traffic, and SSL for browsing. It’s just a wifi network that is passworded with a hidden SSIN.
It’s still going to be faster then dialup… plus more flexible then being connected to a cable. Think of the free wifi as a in addition too, or a if I need it. Rather then a right to the same as everyone else. Not all connections are the same. I’ve got what would be considered junky DSL compared to other 3/768 vs 6/1 that some areas have… but still better then base DSL. All the same other areas have 12 MB Cable or 20MB both way fiber in Sac. The proposed connection will seem plenty fast to those who haven’t had faster… or if you have money you can pay for a faster connection… or be cheap and expect it to be slow.