travelover
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2007
- Messages
- 14,328
I'm pretty sure there is a killer drone circling my house.
The US would not be the first country to have free WIFI.
Niue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am convinced it will happen here... when...
I appreciate your point of view and actually agree with you that good things have been accomplished by more stringent vigilance. It's also true that if police/gummints had free access to our houses, cars, phones, computers, bedrooms, etc. etc. (no warrants) they would catch even MORE bad folks. 200+ years ago, the founders made a choice. They were aware of the advantages of free access to citizens private affairs. They were also painfully aware of what happened when this access was abused (overused, used as a punishment, used for intimidation, etc, etc. etc.) The founders attempted to put limitations on such activities - KNOWING that there was a cost in "safety". Now, it seems, we are attempting to do away with the protections provided to us by the founders (who actually LIVED under a system with very limited freedoms.) If at some point we wake up and realize "this time they've gone to far", it will be too late. Remember what it cost to stop the abuse 200+ years ago.
Saying (in effect) "well, I don't do anything illegal, so why should I care?" is a very slippery slope. One thing I will almost assure you (not you, specifically, ERD50 - just in general), most of us have broken laws that we are not even aware of. Most of us have broken laws we were aware of, but chose to ignore. 99% of the time, even the police don't care. 99% of the time, no one would go to trial with such a trivial offence. BUT, if someone chose to, we would be liable for our "crimes". While we feel "good" about our morality, citizenship, etc., if a gummint wished to coerce us in some fashion, they could find a broken law in our past (or, as is happening now, write new laws to create more "crimes" for us to commit - think EPA regs - fill in a wet spot in your back yard and you may have committed a felony. Forget and take nail clippers through TSA screening, they probably will just take them away from you. But make no mistake you HAVE committed a crime. You COULD be prosecuted. etc., etc.).
I'm not talking about some vast conspiracy here. I'm saying only that gummint is just like a tiger. We put them in cages, not because they are intrinsically evil, but because we know their nature. A tiger will tear you apart absent control. If you wanted to be "safe" from outsiders, you could build your house with a big fence and let the tiger loose in the yard. No one will come in to molest you. Unfortunately, you can no longer leave your house or the tiger will eat you.
Gummints seek more authority, power, control, etc., not because they are "evil", but because it makes their job easier and more effective. At some point we are all "safe" from bad people, but not safe from the gummint (tiger) who reverts to its nature.
Not intended as a rant, but it's starting to sound like one, so I'll stop since YMMV.
but not safe from the gummint (tiger) who reverts to its nature.
I just hope the government doesn't stick its nose into the GPS system. I like the system that Garmin has set up and don't want to see anyone mess with it.
If this came to be I wonder how long it would last?...
Yea, I remember when they said they were going to broadcast free television and radio over the air. Like that would ever work.
Except that they would have to do it by saturation bombing us with advertisements or tracking everything we do online for their own marketing purposes."There are already clear signs in the United States and abroad that if enough of this public spectrum resource is made freely available for unlicensed use, the private sector will step up and make wireless connectivity ubiquitous and affordable, at least in urban and suburban areas.
Some earlier posters talked about how carriers being given "free spectrum". This might have been true with the old analog cellular system, but the present digital spectrum has been sold by auctions since 1994, and this has raised many billions for the US Treasury. See this: Spectrum auction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
WiFi, whether free or not, only covers the [-]"last mile"[/-] "last hundred feet" from the end users to the infrastructure. We all have a wireless station inside our home, but what is the infrastructure that carries the traffic between my WiFi station and your home WiFi station so that we can talk via Skype?
In between our WiFi's is an extensive network of fiber optics, routers, and backbone microwave towers traversing this vast country. Does the US government build and maintain all that? Do we talk about confiscating all these resources?
Not the same thing at all. TV is a single broadcast to multiple receivers. Rather than individual two way data streams to many users.
It is the same in that wifi could be provided free with advertising. Anyone using it can decide whether they want to pay for something better, or put up with the disadvantages that come along with free. Some airports already have free wifi and it is reasonable to use in my experience.
We already have a history of similar endeavors, such as rural electrification. It wasn't cost-effective for private companies to get small towns and farms on the grid, so Uncle Sam stepped in. Now one can argue that it was a *lot* more critical to get electricity to farms out in the boonies than to provide fiber optic high speed Internet to rural areas, but much of the same economic dynamic is in play.Services to rural areas and far-flung places will always be more expensive than to high-density city centers. That applies to many things, like consumer products, healthcare, etc..., and not just Internet access. We cannot blame service providers for not wanting to incur losses. The only way to equalize the price is by subsidy, either explicitly or hidden inside some regulations. Crawford could have just said that we should do it because it's good for society, which was her main point, and be done with it.
We already have a history of similar endeavors, such as rural electrification. It wasn't cost-effective for private companies to get small towns and farms on the grid, so Uncle Sam stepped in. Now one can argue that it was a *lot* more critical to get electricity to farms out in the boonies than to provide fiber optic high speed Internet to rural areas, but much of the same economic dynamic is in play.
We already have a history of similar endeavors, such as rural electrification. It wasn't cost-effective for private companies to get small towns and farms on the grid, so Uncle Sam stepped in. Now one can argue that it was a *lot* more critical to get electricity to farms out in the boonies than to provide fiber optic high speed Internet to rural areas, but much of the same economic dynamic is in play.
I don't think fiber to the last mile is practical for rural areas. Maybe take a page from the developing world and skip the wire lines for wireless.