Wireless Neighborhood Networks in Canada

Anonymous the younger writes "Cringely once again has another column, this time with a company in Canada that does neato stuff with Open Source."

Please.

[Chess_the_cat]

We've reached the point now where the PVR has so much in storage already that it is set to simply record anything that isn't already on disk.

Bullshit.

One problem with this

[Anonymous Coward]

At least as far as the neighbors are concerned. If this guy moves, or gets hit by a bus or his house burns down, there goes their TVs, phones and internet.

Sure, bad things can happen to my cable company, but I'll still have my phone service. Someone blows up the phone company, I still can watch TV.

Something about eggs and baskets...

Re:The conglomorates will put and end to this...

[idesofmarch]

"His solution scales until there's an old dipshit on his cul-de-sac waking him up at 3 AM screaming because something went wrong and today's Oprah got cut off."

I was wondering about the exact same thing! This is all great but is he set up to handle the annoying customer complaints? This is the main thing that would stop me from trying to do it for my neighbors.

Re:He did something stupid

[Zeriel]

WEll, you see, some of us work for companies that are "enlightened" and actually have competent IT staff that don't simply blanket-ban everything that might ever be a possible problem.

I know it's hard to imagine, stuck in drone-land, but there exist good places to work, with sane policies. They only look lax or non-sensical because you're used to working with idiots.

Re:He did something stupid

[TigerNut]

Most likely, the powers-that-be at his company (of which he probably is one) have the intellectual wherewithal to realize that the more responsibility you give to your employees, the more likely the employees are to reward you in terms of productivity and creativity. Putting up a bunch of "don't do this" roadblocks just stifles motivation.

At our company probably 1/3 of the staff take their laptops between home and work (and business travel) all the time. I VPN into our system from home on a regular basis, which effectively exposes both work and home to each other. We have only had one bad episode in the last couple of years, which occurred when the MSBlaster worm got in through an infected laptop and nailed everyone that wasn't running Windoze Update. Educating the staff about spyware removal, antivirus software, and making sure everyone keeps their OS up to date, is actually a lot easier and more productive than just saying "not allowed".

Losing revenue from residential customers - not

[crovira]

"This is America and we work under the Capitalist system. If something isn't profitable it is either done away with completely or bought up by the government. Comcast wouldn't be buying up every cable company in the country to spread their influences if it wasn't profitable."

The Capitalist system is NOT the free market system. It consists of getting the MOST money for your investment.

When there is competition, prices don't necessarily drop either. It doesn't have to be collusion or price fixing either but just an assumption that the price currently charged is what can be borne by the buyers.

The profits may have been small when the infrastructure was being created but become larger and larger as time passes as the infrastructure becomes wide-spread and comoditized.

Almost everything wired will become wireless as the infrastructure becomes wide-spread. Its more convenient NOT to run miles and miles of wires when you can use "nothing" to carry the signal. ("Nothing" is FREE! It costs zero capital expenditure.)

Re:One problem with this

[Idarubicin]

Sure, bad things can happen to my cable company, but I'll still have my phone service. Someone blows up the phone company, I still can watch TV.

On the other hand, some people are now abandoning their landline telephones entirely in favour of VOIP, and they're getting their cable television, internet access, and phone service through the same single pipe.

In this case, if something goes wrong with their service, I expect that they'll probably get a faster response from Andrew (who lives upstairs) than they would from their local cable company (who will be glad to send out a technician to diagnose your problem sometime between the hours of one and six pm, Monday to Friday, at least two business days from now, as long as you stayed on hold for forty-five minutes to make the request...).

If the guy moves, they just sign up for cable, phone, and internet from the other local providers. Andrew just provides a bit of competition in the local market. If Andrew's place burns down--well, I can suck it up. He just lost his house, but I'm going whine because I can't watch Survivor: Toledo? I'll just get together with Andrew and buy him a pint at the local pub--he'll need it.

Re:Observations

[lousyd]

but some big companies are loosing money on the setup

Yeah, well, they're also getting free market R&D. This guy forges new territory and accepts all the risks inherent in doing that. Once he establishes what works and what doesn't, an intelligent risk-minimizing company can come in and buy him out or hire him as a consultant.