Comments on: The Heart of Silicon Valley beats for WiFi

The Heart of Silicon Valley beats for WiFi

sarahnade — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:01:44 -0800

Newsfilter: Mountain View plans WiFi city. The Mountain View, CA City Council has approved an offer from Google to rent the city's street lamps for $12,600/year to install city-wide wireless internet. Some residents are concerned about privacy and health issues, but the city council says that's beyond their scope, and chooses to take the free lunch. (Disclaimer: I live here.)

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:09:48 -0800

Wow. Disclaimer: used to live there and now wish I still did.

By: furtive

furtive — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:11:15 -0800

privacy and health issues? Igonrami!

By: billysumday

billysumday — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:12:20 -0800

Why is Google paying for this? Is it a community service or is it just an experiment? (can't read first link)

By: sarahnade

sarahnade — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:16:22 -0800

billysumday: It's an experiment. Google is fully open to the fact that giving an entire city free wireless will bring them more money. The article is copied here on livejournal">here on livejournal, too.

By: sarahnade

sarahnade — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:17:06 -0800

stupid eyes not working and not hitting preview....

By: substrate

substrate — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:17:44 -0800

What I think furtive is saying sarcastically I'll repeat I'll imply without sarcasm. The wireless won't mystically spy on people, so if you ignore it for all intents and purposes it's privacy neutral. It will neither improve or decrease your privacy. I live in a midwestern town and private enterprise has come in and brought in wireless, only it's fee based. I don't know if there is fee based wireless in Mountain View or not, but I do know that here the public wasn't contacted (except for marketing purposes) nor have I heard any outrage over possible medical issues.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:27:55 -0800

It will be interesting to see how restricted the access is. Can anyone surf hard core porn sites in Mountain View? What about hate sites? I can see some issues with free unfettered internet access (spammers for one) but I like the idea behind the proposal and can't wait for Google to offer Santa Cruz city-wide Wi-Fi, though, truth be told, there are so many unsecured wireless spots here it doesn't make that much of a difference either way, yet.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:28:06 -0800

MetaFilter: Igonrami!

By: subaruwrx

subaruwrx — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:29:01 -0800

One step closer to free google WiFi across the US

By: sarahnade

sarahnade — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:33:31 -0800

There is fee-based in-home wireless in Mountain View (SBC, Comcast, speakeasy, etc), and there are "hot spots" at certain places in town, however it is not currently being transmitted from every streetlight. This is what Google plans to do, and at "no cost" to the consumer. When I was in college, Intel paid for free wireless across the entire campus, and I never heard a peep like this against it out of any of the students. But we were a nerdy school, so I think we were more impressed with the FREE INTERNETS ON THE QUAD W00T than the potential privacy or health infringements.

By: furtive

furtive — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:40:24 -0800

My face is red.

By: Larzarus

Larzarus — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:41:17 -0800

What the hell. I grew up in Mtn View and the whole time it was not known for much more than Moffett/Ames. Sheesh. Nobody had ever heard of it. I remember when the Google campus area & amphitheatre was a drive-in and the city dump. Now look at them. Tres chic. OK, not THAT chic since they've got the only Walmart on the peninsula... and San Antonio Hobby is giving up... but still, free Wifi for all from Google seems cool. Think of all the free pr0n I could have downloaded if I had that back then... (except, uh, I would have had to save it to cassette tape on my Vic20). So...city wide free wifi sounds pretty anonymous...does that mean anyone in MtnView can illegally share music P2P and the RIAA can't identify them?

By: 8 Bit

8 Bit — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:00:20 -0800

the privacy issues are on the part of Google, not the wireless (although, i imagine someone could come up with something about seemless intergregation between cops on the street & databases & i don't know what). but, from the last link They refer to their privacy policy multiple times, but becoming an ISP is so far out of line of their current business practices that I'm not sure you can infer much from their standard policy. Specifically, acting as an ISP gives them access to a lot of data they didn't previously need policy for.

By: 8 Bit

8 Bit — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:01:07 -0800

sorry, second to last link

By: pardonyou?

pardonyou? — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:04:36 -0800

Oakland County, Michigan, just north of Detroit, is in the process of implementing what will apparently be the first county-wide wireless access in the nation.

By: ChasFile

ChasFile — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:06:09 -0800

So...city wide free wifi sounds pretty anonymous...does that mean anyone in MtnView can illegally share music P2P and the RIAA can't identify them? HA HA HA HA HAno.

By: wakko

wakko — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:08:45 -0800

how can wireless be a health issue?

By: 27

27 — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:14:02 -0800

Kudos to Mountain View and Google for a step in the right direction. Someday, this will be the standard instead of the exception but in the meantime forward thinkers have to step up and take those potentially awkward first steps. Sure, there will be issues of privacy, copyright, and personal/public use (among other things) to work out, but the end result will be worth the initial effort - IMO.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:15:24 -0800

"6) Will our health be affected? I suspect most of my internal systems run below 75Hz, but what about bursts of radio frequency at rates close to those that I'm running at? What happens if we set one of these transceivers up in the parking lot over at El Camino Hospital?" The hell?

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:22:12 -0800

sarahnade posted "health issues," Geez, I wonder if any of the people expressing this concern have a wireless phone or microwave in their homes?

By: lodurr

lodurr — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:29:58 -0800

[derail: Whatever happened to Ultra-Wideband?]

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:31:48 -0800

Larzarus writes "I would have had to save it to cassette tape on my Vic20" 8 bit porn is the best

By: substrate

substrate — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:46:45 -0800

Well, there is a potential health issue from all that free sweet wireless porn.

By: sp dinsmoor

sp dinsmoor — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:30:00 -0800

If we only had as much money as Google. To update this previous post - we have an insurance policy, we have an office, and we have been granted access to one of the city's water towers.

By: piedrasyluz

piedrasyluz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:38:54 -0800

It would be nice to see Google (or anyone else for that matter) set something like this up in New Orleans. I am headed back there in January and Tulane is parking two cruise ships on the Mississippi to house students. They'll have to set up some sort of WiFi for the ships, since the campus is already wireless and students have come to expect it. It seems a perfect opportunity for this kind of experiment. Start with the areas around the cruise ships, and expand out from there. And its not as if anyone on the N.O. city council would complain.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:00:06 -0800

Google is one of over two dozen companies that have submitted proposals to provide WiFi to San Francisco. The problem is the details of the proposals are full of "proprietary information" that is not being disclosed to residents.

By: sp dinsmoor

sp dinsmoor — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:56:15 -0800

These guys have already been down there setting up wireless networks in NO. I'm not sure if the networks are still up, but they were there right after the storm.

By: goofyfoot

goofyfoot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:16:20 -0800

I was born in Mountain View, haven't been there since I was a year old, and now, finally, am sure it isn't Mountainview.