Free wifi for all?

[Dot Com]

Dianne Rehm's is addressing this on her show today Ravi She's a patriotic Progressive like me
The FCC?s Proposal For A Free Nationwide Wireless Network | The Diane Rehm Show from WAMU and NPR

 

[peach174]

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.

The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks - The Washington Post

Like we don't have enough unemployment already.
Thanks FCC for wanting to put millions of people more out of a job.

those deadbeats who work for telecom companies? what are they in unions? **** profit at all costs!

Those so called deadbeats, are the ones who are paying their taxes, so that we can have 47% of the nation on gov assistance.

 

[peach174]

Ain't nothing free. Just wait...


And why should it be free?

Surely someone has already tossed this out by now.. The US system of roads, highways and bridges?

With a few toll-booth exceptions it's absolutely free and that bit of infrastructure, and the fact that it's free for all to use regardless of tax bracket, is arguably the reason we have the America that we enjoy today.

Taxes pay for roads and bridges, toll is in addition to state taxes ( double taxation) and matched by Federal dollars.
All Taxes, including state sales tax. Everyone pays state sales tax and that goes toward roads and bridges
No it is not free.
Every single one of us pays for roads and bridges.

 

[rightwinger]

If it turns out to be less expensive, less spotty and perform better than the existing myriad of networks, I'm all for it

 

[Dante]

Like we don't have enough unemployment already.
Thanks FCC for wanting to put millions of people more out of a job.

those deadbeats who work for telecom companies? what are they in unions? **** profit at all costs!

Those so called deadbeats, are the ones who are paying their taxes, so that we can have 47% of the nation on gov assistance.

 

[Dot Com]

And he could block you using various methods, like a vpn. Not to mention that the free wifi could encrypt everything.

It doesn't matter if the router encrypts everything if the user doesn't because everyone on the network would have the same encryption.

By the way, did you notice how I said it wouldn't work on intelligent users, and mentioned you specifically?

^Thanks for stopping by to make a fool of yourself.

I propose standard adoption of WPA2 and a default password of "free". Whenever you wish to connect to complimentary WiFi, you select "Courtyard Marriott" or "Starbucks" like you always have, but you are then prompted for a password.

Just type "free". It's not hard. In fact, operating system vendors could even program your PC to automatically try the password "free" before prompting you for a password on the assumption that you might be selecting a free service.

What is the value of a password if it is a "well-known secret?" WPA2 negotiates unique encryption keys with every computer that connects to it. This means you and I cannot spy on one another's traffic even when sharing access on the same access point. This is not true for WEP, but nearly all 802.11g access points (the most common) support WPA2 and can provide safe, convenient, free internet access.

Dear Starbucks: The skinny on how you can be a security hero | Naked Security

thanks for whackin' that mole Ravi

 

[Dante]

I was actually wondering what bit of infrastructure would be the legacy of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Free connectivity on the internet would be almost as impressive as properly maintaining the hard infrastructure that our parents built in the mid 20th.

we both know 'free' is a subjective term

There is a model for this...toll roads like Massachusetts does with Bridges, Tunnels and it's Turnpike.

Semi-public/semi-private, whatever we call it, works well. There are problems with this sure, but it seems to work out very well compared to other choices.

There are other areas where this public/private partnership works miracles...the government funds research and development in the USA.

 

[Dante]

It doesn't matter if the router encrypts everything if the user doesn't because everyone on the network would have the same encryption.

By the way, did you notice how I said it wouldn't work on intelligent users, and mentioned you specifically?

^Thanks for stopping by to make a fool of yourself.

I propose standard adoption of WPA2 and a default password of "free". Whenever you wish to connect to complimentary WiFi, you select "Courtyard Marriott" or "Starbucks" like you always have, but you are then prompted for a password.

Just type "free". It's not hard. In fact, operating system vendors could even program your PC to automatically try the password "free" before prompting you for a password on the assumption that you might be selecting a free service.

What is the value of a password if it is a "well-known secret?" WPA2 negotiates unique encryption keys with every computer that connects to it. This means you and I cannot spy on one another's traffic even when sharing access on the same access point. This is not true for WEP, but nearly all 802.11g access points (the most common) support WPA2 and can provide safe, convenient, free internet access.

Dear Starbucks: The skinny on how you can be a security hero | Naked Security

thanks for whackin' that mole Ravi

watch out!!!! Windbagh is a self-professed hacker. She will wow you with a Firefox extension and steal a look into your Facebook account.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

^Thanks for stopping by to make a fool of yourself.


Dear Starbucks: The skinny on how you can be a security hero | Naked Security

thanks for whackin' that mole Ravi

watch out!!!! Windbagh is a self-professed hacker. She will wow you with a Firefox extension and steal a look into your Facebook account.

Dante again displays his ignorance of common computer terms.

Hacker is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things in computing. Depending on the context although, the term could refer to a person in any one of several distinct (but not completely disjointed) communities and subcultures:[1]

• People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (White hats), and the morally ambiguous Grey hats. See Hacker (computer security).
• A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.[2] This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.[3] The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as "[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular." See Hacker (programmer subculture).
• The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club[4]) and on software (video games,[5] software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen and created the personal computing industry.[6] See Hacker (hobbyist).

Each of these hacker community/culture examples conform to the definition of an umbrella phenomenon: creative consumers.
Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies," people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is acknowledged by all three kinds of hackers, and the computer security hackers accept all uses of the word, people from the programmer subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and emphasize the difference between the two by calling security breakers "crackers" (analogous to a safecracker).
​

 

[Dante]

poor Windbagh...an expert on definitions too?

man-oh-man, she must really have lots of friends in the real world.

 

[rightwinger]

I was actually wondering what bit of infrastructure would be the legacy of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Free connectivity on the internet would be almost as impressive as properly maintaining the hard infrastructure that our parents built in the mid 20th.

we both know 'free' is a subjective term

There is a model for this...toll roads like Massachusetts does with Bridges, Tunnels and it's Turnpike.

Semi-public/semi-private, whatever we call it, works well. There are problems with this sure, but it seems to work out very well compared to other choices.

There are other areas where this public/private partnership works miracles...the government funds research and development in the USA.

The key is eliminating the hodge podge of pockets of wi-fi from different providers with a unique log on. 4G is not the answer. You should be able to log in anywhere with one sign in.

If the Government can do it cheaper than the private sector......let them

 

[Dante]

I was actually wondering what bit of infrastructure would be the legacy of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Free connectivity on the internet would be almost as impressive as properly maintaining the hard infrastructure that our parents built in the mid 20th.

we both know 'free' is a subjective term

There is a model for this...toll roads like Massachusetts does with Bridges, Tunnels and it's Turnpike.

Semi-public/semi-private, whatever we call it, works well. There are problems with this sure, but it seems to work out very well compared to other choices.

There are other areas where this public/private partnership works miracles...the government funds research and development in the USA.

The key is eliminating the hodge podge of pockets of wi-fi from different providers with a unique log on. 4G is not the answer. You should be able to log in anywhere with one sign in.

If the Government can do it cheaper than the private sector......let them

like health care, the internet is too important to have profit drive access onto it in order to use the web

 

[Bigfoot]

Telecom analyst Jeffery Eisenach is calling out the Washington Post about a story it ran on the FCC’s supposed ambitions to offer free nationwide WiFi, calling the piece “almost entirely fiction.”

WaPo FCC free WiFi story 'almost entirely fiction', says analyst | The Daily Caller

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Telecom analyst Jeffery Eisenach is calling out the Washington Post about a story it ran on the FCC’s supposed ambitions to offer free nationwide WiFi, calling the piece “almost entirely fiction.”

WaPo FCC free WiFi story 'almost entirely fiction', says analyst | The Daily Caller

The government thinks everything works by magic, why does that surprise anyone?