atkulp writes "While cities and incumbent telecommunications operators are fighting it out over municipal WiFi, it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way for large-scale deployments of WiFi and WiMax." The privately funded $5 million dollar wireless network services a modest 700 square miles and seems to be the only show in town.Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='communications,networking';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; Rural Oregon Leads the Way for Large-Scale WiFi Log in/Create an Account | Top | 106 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 106 comments 0: 97 comments 1: 79 comments 2: 60 comments 3: 26 comments 4: 16 comments 5: 7 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays? (Score:4, Interesting) by RKBA (622932) * on Monday October 17, @03:59AM (#13807743) (http://ron.dotson.net/) "Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition."Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)? CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, Article. II., Section. 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. [ Reply to ThisRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Monday October 17, @04:25AMSmall scale? by Kymermosst (Score:2) Monday October 17, @05:58PMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Monday October 17, @05:40AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by pubjames (Score:2) Monday October 17, @06:27AM Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays (Score:5, Insightful) by kkohlbacher (922932) on Monday October 17, @09:18AM (#13808550) > I think it's more like: "Stop talking politics! What happened on Big Brother last weekend. OMG look what the girl is wearing!? Fat people SHOULD NOT be wearing Abercrombie and Fitch!?!"Wow.(Sorry, OT rant...)(Most) Americans are elusive and close-minded when it comes to politics. We have the big guys patting us on the head saying, "Everything will be ok. Don't think. Don't question. Go about your regular daily routine and everything will be fine." I met a 26 year old last night that said, "The President will pass the law for Christians. He can do anything!" My response: "No, he is not a dictator. Bills must be passed through the H.O.R and the Senate first." Her response: "Who are they!?!?"She could probably tell me Tom Cruise's foot size and what Jennifer Aniston had for breakfast on the second Monday in August though...Anyways, it looks like its starting to hit the fan finally with Rove, DeLay, Brown and all these other morons. About time. I thought the checks and balances system was done for. These people need to be strung up, cause the little guys are always footing the bill. (Now if I could just figure out a way to get high-speed from a non-conglomerate...)BTW, I'm from Dayton, OH--I think it was more like 45 degrees this weekend Alex...! [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Alex P Keaton in da (Score:2) Monday October 17, @07:13AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by pizzaman100 (Score:2) Monday October 17, @01:02PM Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays (Score:5, Interesting) by vandan (151516) on Monday October 17, @07:50AM (#13808252) (http://entropy.homelinux.org/) The only way to address this is to stip all parties of all funding, and then allocate money for campaigning from tax revenue. Then you make the accounts books of all parties open to public inspection, as well as bank account and tax details of all politicians AND their families. If people want to 'serve' the public, then they can start out by being honest. And you know what the politicians always say about such invasions of our privacy ... Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about Time they applied this to themselves.Equal funding of ALL political parties. Equal media access to ALL political parties. People implicated in bribery get charged with treason. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by geofferensis (Score:1) Monday October 17, @10:20AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by NeMon'ess (Score:2) Monday October 17, @11:55AMJust need to get the for-profit Corps. out by Kadin2048 (Score:2) Monday October 17, @02:29PMThe cure for bad speech is more speech. by jbn-o (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:03PMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by roystgnr (Score:3) Monday October 17, @11:51AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by GreyWolf3000 (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:16PMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Cromac (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:36PMRe:Political bribes / Other wireless initiatives by saskboy (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:35PMThe U.S. government is very corrupt. by Futurepower(R) (Score:3) Monday October 17, @08:49AMRe:The U.S. government is very corrupt. by ThaFooz (Score:3) Monday October 17, @01:28PMI'm guessing: You have done no reading. by Futurepower(R) (Score:2) Monday October 17, @05:26PMRe:I'm guessing: You have done no reading. by ThaFooz (Score:2) Monday October 17, @10:17PMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Big_Al_B (Score:2) Monday October 17, @11:14AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Marxist Hacker 42 (Score:2) Monday October 17, @01:13PMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by poot_rootbeer (Score:2) Monday October 17, @11:21AMRe:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Obfuscant (Score:2) Monday October 17, @03:19PM Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays (Score:4, Insightful) by threaded (89367) on Monday October 17, @04:31AM (#13807826) (http://www.threaded.com/index.html) A bribe in my dictionary is something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.The case in point: a law maker makes a law in return for campaign contributions. The law maker would not have made the law without the contributions. The contributor would not have contributed without getting the law.That is bribery.HTH [ Reply to This | ParentBribes have always been accepted practice by TubeSteak (Score:3) Monday October 17, @06:13AMRe:Bribes have always been accepted practice by shaitand (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:23PMRe:Bribes have always been accepted practice by poopdeville (Score:1) Monday October 17, @01:39PMBribery or extortion? by geoffrobinson (Score:1) Monday October 17, @01:44PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays (Score:5, Interesting) by douthat (568842) on Monday October 17, @06:07AM (#13808032) I happen to have a copy of Black's Law Dictionary here, so I decided to look it up:Bribe:Any money, goods, right in action, property, thing of value, or any promise or undertaking to give any, asked, given, or accepted, with a corrupt intent to induce or influence action, vote, or opinion of person in any public or official capacity.abbreviated, that would be:Any money given with intent to influence action of a person in any public or official capacity.Given the legal definition of a bribe, I'd say that any incident where a politician accepts campaign contributions from a lobbyist and changes stance on any particular issue or votes favorably towards the cause of the lobbyist should be suspect. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Don't paraphrase that definition by douthat (Score:2) Monday October 17, @01:56PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.3 replies beneath your current threshold. Where is the rural California? (Score:1, Interesting) by JDStone (741327) on Monday October 17, @04:03AM (#13807752) (http://www.symbolicsource.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday August 15, @11:51AM) Rural Oregon? I need my rural California broadband. I've got the slowest DSL physically possible! I'm about 25 minutes away from civilization, but I'm still 3 miles from the SBCs central office. Speakeasy.net, please bring me "broad"band, notice the broad part. Although, it is nice to see that areas are snubbing the broadband providers and bringing in their own broadband. It's aboot time. [ Reply to ThisRe:Where is the rural California? by MadMartigan2001 (Score:1) Monday October 17, @10:50AMRe:Where is the rural California? by JDStone (Score:1) Monday October 17, @01:44PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Surveillance? (Score:4, Interesting) by ChrisGilliard (913445) <chris.xcoderz@com> on Monday October 17, @04:08AM (#13807771) (http://www.xcoderz.com/) "Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education,"Uhhh, I don't know about this. I don't like the idea of the feds using my internet traffic for "surveillance". [ Reply to ThisRe:Surveillance? by Rhinobird (Score:2) Monday October 17, @06:06AMRe:Surveillance? by Beatbyte (Score:2) Monday October 17, @09:53AMRe:Surveillance? by ChrisGilliard (Score:1) Monday October 17, @01:20PMRe:Surveillance? by GrigorPDX (Score:2) Monday October 17, @02:14PM $5 million dollar wireless network? (Score:4, Funny) by Atario (673917) on Monday October 17, @04:09AM (#13807773) Is that anything like a number #2 pencil? Or a 10% percent raise? [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Oregan? (Score:4, Insightful) by bladx (816461) on Monday October 17, @04:12AM (#13807780) "it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way"let's spell it Oregon [ Reply to ThisRe:Oregan? by Yeti.SSM (Score:1) Monday October 17, @04:52AMRe:Oregan? by audi100quattro (Score:2) Monday October 17, @05:06AMOrygun by Bowling Moses (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:48PMRe:Oregan? by Marxist Hacker 42 (Score:2) Monday October 17, @01:15PMRe:Oregan? by bladx (Score:1) Monday October 17, @04:26AMRe:Oregan? by Analog Squirrel (Score:1) Monday October 17, @11:10AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.2 replies beneath your current threshold. security of WiFi/WiMax (DoS potentials) (Score:4, Interesting) by IDkrysez (552137) on Monday October 17, @04:24AM (#13807808) From what I've seen, normal Wifi (802.11b and 802.11g) can suffer denial of service fairly easily, even with simply misconfigured clients. I'm not sure if WiMax addresses this, I hope so, but TFA says that the wireless network will cover surveillance presumedly for the chemical depot(s) as well as the shipping yard, and also that various emergency signs can be controlled by WiFi. Assuming they've got these devices and monitoring/control [sub]nets setup securely, it seems that they're still quite vulnerable to a simple denial of service attack. Taking out traffic lights and/or jamming radios is not a new idea to Bad Guys (and Bad Girls), it seems this makes it fairly easy to accomplish criminally-intented DoS with OTS components. I hope there's more to it, possibly a followup article from Wired, which has gotten so damned fufu in recent years.Yay Oregon!      -IDkrysez [ Reply to Thisit's worse than that by subtropolis (Score:1) Monday October 17, @09:46AM GOOD! (Score:5, Funny) by Foktip (736679) on Monday October 17, @04:37AM (#13807844) (http://visible-dreams.com/blog/) My town is in the same situation. I have developed the equation for political drag on wifi:Dp[wifi] = n/(1/2pU^2A*Re)t^Swhere S stands for stupidity factor, and n is the number of telecoms, p ~ politicians, U ~ potential userbase factor, A ~ land area/size, Re ~ Retardation number, and t ~ reasonable time expectation [ Reply to ThisRe:GOOD! by hollanan (Score:2) Monday October 17, @06:37AMRe:GOOD! by batageek (Score:1) Monday October 17, @01:03PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Um, no they dont. (Score:4, Interesting) by Lumpy (12016) on Monday October 17, @04:42AM (#13807854) (http://timgray.blogspot.com/) There are several community wireless networks that do very well and the one in seattle [seattlewireless.net] is larger than this if you count all the hotspot's and their square footage of coverage.Maybe for a privately owned pay for use, but not for existing wireless coverage.and the funny part is the community wireless projects are done without wimax. 802.11 point to point works very well. [ Reply to ThisRe:Um, no they dont. by jonbrewer (Score:3) Monday October 17, @05:02AM Re:Um, no they dont. (Score:4, Interesting) by Lumpy (12016) on Monday October 17, @08:02AM (#13808287) (http://timgray.blogspot.com/) Square miles is easy, and I suggest you contact the guys at seattle wireless and get more info. I helped my local community wireless based on their designs and we have almost 90 square miles coverage with just a small handful of us. (Note a 802.11 access point with antennas outside and up in the air has pretty good coverage, a ~1000 foot circle of coverage add's up fast as you add access points. Most of our access points have OTS 6dbi outdoot antennas with a 8 degree downtilt at about the 100 foot mark up towers or buildings around town. having less than 6 inches of coax reduces loss quite a bit and having the point to point link right there next to the open access point makes a big difference. Each new access point costs less than $1000.00 to install including equipment and a second point to point dish or helical antenna back at a hub point.It is really easy to gain square miles of coverage. remember 2 square miles is a very small amount of land area and can be covered quite easily. espically if you pick and choose covering spots that matter. (the oil/gas trasnfer station and train yard do not need wireless coverage, the park and residential areas do.) [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold. the Tragedy of the Commons issue... (Score:5, Insightful) by Douglas Simmons (628988) on Monday October 17, @04:44AM (#13807865) (http://assambassador.com/) Every time a new large scale public wifi deployment story hits the wires, the topic of preventing abuse while maximizing usability emerges. Maybe it's just my 4:23am weirdness, but I think I'm on to something: Given that all unsuccessfully throttled bandwidth will always get sucked up by people who will inevitably figure out how to procure gigs of entertainment/warez, thereby screwing over people downloading important shit [debian.org], both, rather all types of data transfering people will be left frustrated. However, as bandwidth improvements continues to enable us one not-to-distant day to transfer real quick-like the highest quality five channel 30 frames per second 1600x1200 pr0n, to use video as an example, bandwidth will eventually surpass what we could possibly need to keep ourselves "busy" and there eventually will be enough public juice to go around without throttling (pingflooding usage being an exception of course).Yeah this brings us back to Bill Gates quotes paralleling my pr0n res hypothetical to be good enough to suit us (like the 640KB did), but, I mean, c'mon, won't that video quality suffice? The answer is yes, until the market fully adopts 3D holograph pr0n that will require some more zeros and ones.I mean, c'mon. [ Reply to This Re:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... (Score:5, Funny) by MacGod (320762) on Monday October 17, @05:59AM (#13808017) 4:23AM weirdness? Your time stamp says 4:44AM. Did it really take you 21 minutes to write that post? Be honest now, you were "researching" high-res pr0n at the same time, weren't you? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by bleckywelcky (Score:1) Monday October 17, @10:58AM Re:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... (Score:4, Funny) by Doctor Memory (6336) on Monday October 17, @11:11AM (#13809277) (http://radiofreeoz.net/) Since his home page is at "assambassador.com", I'd say you hit it. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by Durf (Score:1) Tuesday October 18, @12:33AMRe:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by cpeterso (Score:2) Monday October 17, @04:18PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. This is really really really good news. (Score:3, Interesting) by freakybob (715183) on Monday October 17, @04:52AM (#13807883) On tv shows such as 24 and Spooks, you know how when a bad guy uses his credit card at a gas station and they can immediately pull up the CCTV footage of him doing it? Even though CCTV kind of means that it's tv on a CLOSED CIRCUIT? I think that's what the article means when it says the cloud can be used for "surveillance" - it makes this commonly used artistic license a reality.In the future, I have always hoped there will be wireless internet pretty much everywhere, for free. I'm not sure of a way for the providers to make back their money other than taxes, but I'm sure there will be a solution. [ Reply to ThisRe:This is really really really good news. by commodoresloat (Score:3) Monday October 17, @07:48AMRe:This is really really really good news. by pclminion (Score:2) Monday October 17, @12:42PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. I wonder if.... (Score:2, Funny) by Brad1138 (590148) on Monday October 17, @05:39AM (#13807970) the Borg run on WiFi? [ Reply to ThisRe:I wonder if.... by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Monday October 17, @06:23AMRe:I wonder if.... by CheeseTroll (Score:1) Monday October 17, @10:53AM Interesting (Score:3, Interesting) by Trip Ericson (864747) on Monday October 17, @06:18AM (#13808051) (http://www.rabbitears.info/) According to the article, this county has roughly the same population that my county has (my county has a little over 12,000 and no traffic lights, compared to the one in the story with 11,000 and no traffic lights). The only difference is that my county would likely put up a fight over having towers scattered all over the place, regardless of what service they were providing.This county also blocked a coal-burning power plant, so the people who wanted it moved it 2 miles, just across the county line, and got it built.And blocked a landfill in a remote section of the county.I'm not sure that a project like this would face such opposition, especially if the towers could also provide cell phone service (which is also very poor in the county). I know that everyone I talk to that can't currently get high-speed internet is always saying "oh there has got to be a way!" especially considering that the phone lines in much of the county are so old that connections above 28.8kbps (that's a 3K transfer rate) are rare.I have heard that the school system wants to do something like this, but I know the admin who thought it up, and I don't really want to use something he runs. I heard something about "free but filtered" and I almost said "don't bother" right then and there. [ Reply to This Politics and big business (Score:5, Interesting) by CharliePete (923290) on Monday October 17, @06:39AM (#13808100) A couple of yearss back I started looking into using an alternative ISP for my DSL service. After checking into several that had packages that more closely suited my needs I quickly discovered that the rates that the few providers that offered service in my area were 2 - 3 times higher that what I was already paying for with my telco based ISP. It seems that the FCC regulations that required telcos to open their networks to regional ISPs at discounted rates applied to everyone except Verizon. Economic legislation should only be used to encourage competition not stifle it as we see with any legislation promoted by the Bigs (like the DMCA an the idea of software patents). My hat's off to Mr. Ziari and the people of Hermiston, Oregon for getting this set up on their own. [ Reply to This Coincidence...? (Score:2, Funny) by PhairOh (902252) on Monday October 17, @07:32AM (#13808209) So, 2 years ago an Iranian immigrant comes to this tiny rural county with an idea to set up a wireless network that would allow all sorts of surveillance of any transactions or other data sent over it by those that set it up. Oh, and by the way, this tiny rural county that has this Iranian immigrant creating a wireless network that is privately funded (yet they never mention who exactly is funding it except to say that it was at Ziari's expense) just happens to have one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the US.Is it just me, or does this coincidence sound like the beginning of a 24 season? [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. So does this mean... (Score:2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17, @08:22AM (#13808357) that I can now get in touch with a doctor when I'm on 'The Trail' (as they call it in Oregon) and Hannah comes down with dysentery? [ Reply to This Cool...WiFi broadcasts of the live sex shows (Score:1) by Retired Replicant (668463) on Monday October 17, @10:43AM (#13809097) So does this mean I can sneak a spycam into the live sex shows and broadcast it out over WiFi? [ Reply to This But is the WIFI network safe/secure? (Score:2) by digitaldc (879047) on Monday October 17, @10:45AM (#13809108) And for the Hermiston Police Department, having squad cars equipped with a wireless laptop means officers can work less overtime by being able to file their crime reports from the field.Nothing in this article mentions safety or security, and the question must be asked:How safe is this network? Can anyone intercept data running through it? What happens if your data is stolen because of it?Just a thought. [ Reply to ThisWIFI security article from SFGate by digitaldc (Score:2) Monday October 17, @11:16AMRe:But is the WIFI network safe/secure? by markana (Score:1) Monday October 17, @11:58AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Hold the champagne, we're not there yet. (Score:1) by illest503 (130569) on Monday October 17, @12:49PM (#13809984) FTFA:The high desert around Hermiston also happens to be the home of one of the nation's largest stockpiles of Cold War-era chemical weapons. Under federal guidelines, local government officials were required to devise an emergency evacuation plan for the accidental release of nerve and mustard agents.This would not have happened if not for the weapons incinerator [oregontoxics.org] in Hermiston. For anything other than emergency alerts, there just wasn't demand. So don't go thinking your podunk town in Iowa will have a wifi cloud this time next year...unless you get lucky like us "Oreganians" and get force-fed the risk of a chem/bioweapon catastrophe extravaganza!Likewise, Unwire Portland [www.pdc.us] wouldn't happen except for the fact that they are structuring it so that only large players can provide service on the network == profit. The $40 million up front cost keeps local providers out. It's not yet known whether it will be a "walled garden" with access only to regional websites, or a "drinking fountain" with trickle-speed Internet-wide access. Public benefit also has too small a value in the RFP, IMHO. The city's main stated reason is to save money on parking meters that currently use batch credit card processing over a cellular link -- Visa changed the rules so that such transactions are flagged "card not present" and subject to higher fees. It's an interesting proposal, to be sure, but...I just haven't seen a municipal wifi plan yet with a model that strikes me as egalitarian and sustainable. Maybe a reader here can point me in the right direction...Will [ Reply to This Awesome coverage (Score:2) by RomulusNR (29439) on Monday October 17, @01:43PM (#13810407) (http://www.keithtyler.com/) 700 sq. mi! That's like, what, less than 1% of rural Oregon?"Rural Oregon", now that's a redundancy in terms. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Umatilla Ordinance Depot (Score:1) by elliott666 (447115) on Monday October 17, @02:13PM (#13810668) An interesting side note on this is that Hermiston, OR is where Umitilla Ordinance Depot is located. For those who aren't familiar with this facility, this is one of two places in the United States where chemical weapons are destroyed, the other being in Arkanasas. About 12% of the US stockpile of VX and GB (nerve agents) and HD (blister, or "mustard" agent) are stored as liquid in various types of munitions and containers, including rockets, bombs, projectiles, mines, bulk containers, and aerial spray tanks.You can find information on this here:http://www.deq.state.or.us/umatilla/ [state.or.us]Maybe it's time to take Google Earth for a spin. [ Reply to This6 replies beneath your current threshold.