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Wireless Networking Hardware

Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid 164

Posted by michael from the visionary dept.
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports Taipei city planners are building what they say will be the world's biggest Wi-Fi network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital. The project will build on the network available in Hsinyi, an up-and-coming shopping and financial district that is home to the world's tallest building, the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101, and the city government headquarters. The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million. Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. The network will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005."
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Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid

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  • Will Linux play a significant or insignificant role here? Ohh by the way, is Linux able to participate in such a role-out?
    • Ohh by the way, is Linux able to participate in such a role-out?
      You say that almost like Linux is a company or something. I suppose if they wanted to use Linux they would, otherwise they won't.

      • While this is a silly question . . . (Score:5, Informative)

        by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @02:15PM (#10867096) Journal
        I'm reporting to you live from an apartment about one hundred yards from the Shi Da University campus in lovely downtown Taipei and I'm pleased to tell you that, although I'm on a landline DSL connection, Taiwan's Internet connectivity is quite GNU/Linux friendly and has been for many years so there is no reason to believe the wireless will be any different.
        In fact, early on, the local ISPs were quick to provide free IP sharing routers with DSL connections. Many of those devices were really just embedded Linux systems. This was back in the days when ISPs in the US were still arguing whether you could have a home network on a brodband line. Here, quite to the contrary, the idea of sharing a connection between multiple PCs was being pushed by the ISPs. So making the best use of connectivity in the manner that the user sees fit has never been a real issue here since the advent of broadband. Intriguingly, in the modem days not so many years ago things were terrible. Once DSL came out though. everything changed for the better to put it mildly. That's is truly putting it mildly, the connectivity here is awesome. It's fast, cheap and hassle free and apparently just getting more so as time goes by.
        But in terms of GNU/Linux in Taiwan, I might as well mention that I'm currently writing to you on an IBM Thinkpad notebook running BVA1L Knoppix which is a custom version of the Knoppix LiveCD with a pre-configured Chinese environment including a version of the Chinese character input system called XCin. I am led to believe this customized version of Knoppix is maintained by a local boy at Tai Da which is another university that coincidentally is also just down the street from where I'm camping out this evening. So far, it's mostly only the younger people who have caught on to the fact that there is finally a totally convenient way to use Chinese with a Linux desktop, but it's spreading fast because people in Taiwan hate to feel like they're getting left out of a trend.
        As a matter of fact, the maintainer of this distro made a rather smart move by placing pictures of various cities from around Taipei as the default desktop so, as opposed to the generic Microsoft desktop experience, this system immediately creates a sense of recognition, pride and even ownership among the users. Just in the last month or so several Taiwanese people I've shown this to have dumped XP or 2K and stuck with a hard drive install of this distro. The key point is the character input that works with Open Office and Firefox but the little touches like the localized wallpaper also has a powerful psychological impact that makes people more willing to put up with having to mount devices and learn how to cut and paste the right way and these other trivialities. If people are not interested in a new system these minor issues are insurmountable, but if you create subtle motivation by massaging the edges and making things cozy and targeted precisely for a very specific audiance it is surprising how eager people can be to learn.
        Hard to believe how fast things change, but people's tastes are fickle and the older alternatives have a great disadvantage in that once you were trendy in the past you've got a hell of a battle being trendy in the future.
        So, if you're afraid GNU/Linux is being squeezed out of the action in Taiwan, you may relax because it is hardly the case.
        • I find XCin difficult to use. It doesn't have "intelligent input" (i.e., adaptive learning of common phrases), and it's often crashy. SCIM (Simple Chinese Input Method) is a much better choice -- probably the best Linux Chinese input system, and probably better than Microsoft's IME. It's not fully open-source, but it's still a great input system.
        • I was in Pristine, a internet provider and translation service, in Taipei several years ago and saw their servers. It was my first exposure to FreeBSD and I loved it immediately. In recent visits I've seen a lot of Linux being used. The Taiwan government is backing Linux for schools and business. Try the story at the URL: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2000/10/1 0/0000056762

          It's free and no sign up.

  • any by the end of 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:31AM (#10864259)
    the technology will be outdated.

    i am all for this but the technologies go out of date so fast, did they make it easily upgradable is the real question

  • Obligatory Star Wars (mis)quote: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ignignot ( 782335 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:31AM (#10864266) Journal
    No city that large has a cloaking device!

    Thanks, now time to return to my fortress of dorkitude.
    • Haha... I misinterpretted the title that way too at first.

      The US seriously needs to jump on this band wagon if we want to compete with the Taiwanese Borg Swarm Armies with nanobots in their lungs in the near future. (teehee) If we're scratching our asses over here reading about the Ubiquitous Net in the latest edition of Wired while the Taiwanese are actually DOING IT we're gonna find ourself falling behind in what I think will be unforseen technological advances. (Kinda unspecific, I know, but I just ha

      • The US seriously needs to jump on this band wagon if we want to compete with the Taiwanese Borg Swarm Armies with nanobots in their lungs in the near future

        Won't happen. Americanas are too wedded to libertarian economic philosophies, and will oppose *any* government attempt to do this. Plus the telcos will lobby against it, like they did in Philadelphia, effectively preventing anything like this from happening.

        Don't get your hopes up is all I'm saying.

  • seriously (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:32AM (#10864268) Homepage
    Is this the beginning of the end? Can ADSL/Cable companies compete with this stuff?

    • Re:seriously (Score:2, Interesting)

      by PKPerson ( 784484 )
      With s group of students or a busy area will make this VERY slow. At average, you will gat 11(im assuming .11b) MBps, but shared with 20 people (not uncommon in taiwan) it will be slowed to .5 Mbps, which i guess is worth the $12

    • Re:seriously (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Secrity ( 742221 )
      If this works like it is hoped and the fees remain at the level mentioned in the article, I very seriously doubt that anybody can compete with them. I have serious doubts that it will work as it is hoped (at least in most areas). If it does work as advertised, no wired competitor will be able to compete on price. It could end up that it is good enough for mobile computing but not be considered to be good enough to replace ADSL/cable in the home. It is also possible that the entire network could become s
    • Actually, DSL in Taiwan is dirt cheap.
    • I hope not.
    • Why do they have to compete with wireless? The ISP I work for has been doing everything they can to join the wireless Internet craze. I can see it now: AOL WiFi... (No, I'm not with AOL.)

  • Outside of Taiwan ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:32AM (#10864270) Homepage
    ... major ISPs and email service providers are already updating their spam filters and reinforcing their network firewalls in anticipation of the upcoming WiFi deployment.

  • I love WiFi, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mogrify ( 828588 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:35AM (#10864296) Homepage
    I'm not sure I'd want it to be my primary net connection. Still seems somehow up in the air (no pun intended. Really!) with security standards, new 802.11x's, device incompatibility, poor Windows functionality, and weak Linux support for many chipsets. That said, this is really how it ought to work... ubiquitous, cheap access can only be achieved with wireless because of the infrastructure savings. This is a good start. Now let's nail down the standards.

    • Re:I love WiFi, but.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:47AM (#10864427)
      Poor Windows functionality? You're joking, right? I'll chalk that one up to excitement :) For the record, Windows has flawless wireless networking. XP (pre-SP2 & SP2) comes with a zero-configuration service, and supports every wireless card on the market. You just pop in your card, and it'll do everything for you. Encryption? No problem - it'll just ask for the password. It'll then save that profile, and use it when needed. SP2 polished off some of the rougher corners, and now it's as close to perfect as I could ask for. I've been using it on various windows PCs for years, and it's given me no trouble at all. Of course, I'm not going to guess what Linux's support is like, as I've never used a wireless linux box.
      • You're right, SP2 seems a big step forward... but I've seen Windows struggle with some multi-AP setups; of course it's hard to know how much of that is Windows, and how much is the hardware. I'll backpedal :) But, as a larger point, universal WiFi does need to have a high standard -- you should *never* have to think about it. It needs to be seamless, secure, fast, compatible, reliable... not sure we're 100% there yet.

        • Re:I love WiFi, but.... (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          > universal WiFi does need to have a high standard -- you should *never* have to
          > think about it.

          Sorry, that's naive. Do you ever think about ethernet when you use it? And that's a mature standard. Nothing is ever perfect. Sometimes you have to quit being such a pussy and implement. That is what Taipei is doing, and good on them.

          > not sure we're 100% there yet.

          We're not "there," but you're off where the deficiencies actually lie. Read some of the scholarly literature about wireless-aware/power-a
        • I hear ya :) I've had problems with devices and windows. It usually comes down to the drivers. Bad drivers can kill a windows box instantly.

          I don't want to sound like a windows dick (there are a lot of 'em out there), but I've never found anything problematic with WLAN & Windows itself. I did have a netgear wg614 router, and that sucked. My netgear PCMCIA card couldn't sustain a connection, and would drop out every few minutes or so. I upgraded the router to a 624, and it's been perfect. That's

          • Prepare to be modded down as a troll for posting about something Windows does correctly :)

            (And I'll prepare to be modded off topic -> but I have Karma to burn - I'll be fine lol)
            • I expect that with every post I make about windows :) I just believe in objectivity - I'll use whatever OS I think does the job better. I'll go OT here for an example: At work, we had a worm outbreak on our windows boxes, and they were choking our linux-based internet gateway. To fix it, I built a redhat 9 box with two network cards, set up iptables and routing, and filtered out the network requests the worm was throwing out. If I tried to do that with windows, it would have been expensive. In the end
      • SP2 was a nightmare for Wifi! Everything broke, initially. Some vendors still haven't updated their drivers for all products (Netgear MA101 yes I'm looking at you!)

        I'm primarily a Windows user, but my iBook is the only machine I own which has never had wifi driver/compatibility/setup problems.
        • My upgrade to SP2 worked flawlessly for my notebook. I use the Netgear WGT511 card, and it worked straight away. I've yet to see any problems at all with SP2 with wifi... Not that I don't believe you, it's just that I've had exactly the opposite reaction :)
      • Especially on FreeBSD. It recognized my Orinoco card right away, I configured the interface for DHCP just like it were any other NIC, and it worked right off the bat. My experience with booting some live Linux CDs (L.A.S., Knoppix) was just as smooth. They recognized and auto-configured without any intervention.
    • 802.11b/g works fine for Windows 2000. The Linux support situation is sad though. I really didn't have a problem with XP, but this was just before SP2. I should reinstall XP sometime now that I have more memory.

      If you set up a client / bridge box you can pretend it is a wired connection, although your traffic might be sniffable by more people than it would be for a totally wired connection.
  • Taipei to Cloak City

    Finally, a tinfoil hat to cover an entire city, maybe we can finally start freeing our selves from these cumbersome cloaking devices.

  • THREE things about taipei (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1) There are more 7/11's than men in taipei
    2) There are more women than men in taipei
    3) I was using my neighbors wi fi for free and the department store next door's wi fi for free. If Taipei already doesnt have wi fi available in some shape or form somewhere then something's amiss.
  • What will be the human cost factor? How many war drivers will be put out of business?

    I know of several cities that are supposed to be putting in free WiFi for their citizens. This will put more and more ISPs into the economic trashheap. This can't be allowed to continue! Soon the economic impact will upset the whole applecart!

    Join us now, before it's too late!

    This post brought to you by Horse Drawn Buggy Manufacturers of America.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong - isn't the bandwidth over wireless shared by the users connected to a particular access point?

    Say, if AP1 (100 Mb/s connection) has 10 users, each one gets 10 Mb/s. But if 20 users were to connect, won't each one get 5 Mb/s?

    -- rxMx --

    • Not necessarily (Score:3, Informative)

      by b00m3rang ( 682108 )
      Only if everyon'e using maximum bandwidth continuously (highly unlikey). And even then, you can have multiple networks on multiple channels in the same geographic area.

      • Re:Not necessarily (Score:2, Insightful)

        by relaxmax ( 686075 )

        you can have multiple networks on multiple channels in the same geographic area

        But this would mean having redundant access points. If you run, say 8 channels in the same area, you'll have 8 times the number of access points - one per channel.

        Does anyone know of industrial-use access points that can be visible on multiple channels simultaneously? This would be a very interesting solution for setups that require different access levels for different types of users.

  • This Will Be Interesting to Say the Least (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wicked187 ( 529065 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:42AM (#10864365) Homepage
    I think getting to work on this project would be quite fun. You get to be involved in a large deployment. And, a deployment like this is never over... so there is some sense of jobs security. A lot of you will say negative things, it is the Slashdot norm, but hey, it is driving innovation... everything bad about can be experienced on the Internet as a whole, this just makes it easier. So, please keeps the negative comments to a minimum... This project really needs all the support it can get. It has a big chance for failure all by itself, it does not need any help there. But, if it is successful, that is another win for geeks around the world!

  • In related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:42AM (#10864371) Homepage
    The People's Republic of China has placed an order for 20,000 cans of Pringles.

  • Not that I'll ever go there, but it's nice to know that should need arise, I can fill my double-gupl with diet coke (or something) in Taipei.

    Mind you, probably not in south-central PA, but definitely Taipei.

  • Reminds me of Tesla (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jabex ( 320163 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:48AM (#10864443) Homepage
    All this talk about large scale wireless reminds me of Tesla and some of his crazy ideas http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_todre.html [pbs.org].

    Although Tesla can be creepy sometimes. When he was trying to do something similar with his tower he said, "In this system that I have invented," Tesla explained, "it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth, otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip... so that the whole of this globe can quiver."

    I hope they're planning on making sure those access points are gripping the Earth hard enough.
  • That Taipei 101 buidling is really really really big, man have you seen pictures of it... Ok so all they need to do is put one extremly large access point on top of that building and everyone can get coverage. But then put repeaters up where there is a loss of signal. But the most important thing here is that they have that big building and they are gonna have the world's largest wifi grid. Move over New York cause here com Taipei....
  • I would expect it to be cheaper than wired lines, since it will be much slower and congested once all those people get on the shared 2-54mb (depending on your area) wireless network

  • Great! (Score:2)

    by Pope ( 17780 )
    Just what I always wanted, more electromagnetic radiation flying around.

  • D2D WiFi technology ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Psycho77 ( 695148 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @10:59AM (#10864553) Homepage
    Thats always make me wonder if big WiFI manufacturers like Linksys (Cisco), D-Link, 3com, NetGear, SMC, etc.. Will ever use the D2D technology. (1500 feet Wifi)

    I see this company has his products out for a long time now, but i never heard anyone mention it.
    D2D Technology [parkervision.com]

    In theory, if you use 1 antenna every 1500 feets, vs 300 feets, its supposed to cost less for the city :)

    Anyone use that ? Whats your thought about it.
    • It looks interesting. I think if you try to get too much range and spread them too thin, you might get too many people trying to use any one particular access point.

      Another problem is standardization, I think people want it to be an actual part of the 802.11 standard before using it.

  • What AP hardware will they use? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @11:03AM (#10864585)
    I'm sure I'm not the only geek curious to know whether the city will use standard consumer Wifi APs from Linksys, DLink or the like, or go for either custom or industrial-level (Cisco) hardware?
    • No, you're probably just the first one not to realize what an asinine waste of money it would be to use consumer-grade hardware for an industrial-grade job like this.
  • will that be bigger then the http://djurslands.net/ [djurslands.net] network? it's rural.. but big.. and growing.. is tapei that big or is it size measured in amount of accespoints/users ?
  • ... fighting SARS. Winter is approaching in the Northern Hemisphere.

  • Some stuff from Nortel Networks (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here are a couple of links from their site.
    Wireless Mesh Networks [nortelnetworks.com]
    Taipei Mesh [nortelnetworks.com]

  • That's it! (Score:2, Funny)

    by PeDRoRist ( 639207 )
    Ok that's it, i'm off to TaiPei to open a tinfoil hats shop.
    I'm going to be RICH!
  • Yeah, like some of you said, it might be kind of slow and congested, but at least it's a start. I mean, when the Internet first came around, the connection was still slower than what these people will prolly be getting. But nobody ever said that early Internet was useless (it wasn't very useful but it wasn't useless, either). So, I say, it's a step, a small one, but an important one.
  • 2001 report of bankruptcyfiling [com.com] Followed by closing doors. [com.com]
    At one time there were Metricom trucks all over Atlanta putting their stuff on utility poles.

  • A city that size can't have a cloaking device!?

  • A realistic plan - as opposed to Philadelphia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mpest ( 626793 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @11:40AM (#10865045)
    Its interesting to hear their plan - that it will cost $70m to cover 105 miles of Taipei and they will charge for user access. Here in Philadelphia a plan was announced to cover our 135 square miles for $10m in up-front costs and $1m per year in on-going costs w/ no access fees. I've decried the plan here (in Philadelphia) as ridiculous since the day it was announced. If I had to guess, I would say the private industry in Taipei that is setting up this network is being much more realistic than our soundbite-seeking John Street led government here.
  • The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan.

    What on earth does 7-Eleven ownership have to do with wireless networks? Why was this tasty tidbit featured so prominently in the synopsis?

    • Re:7-Eleven? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Glowing Fish ( 155236 )
      If you ever go to Taiwan, you will understand the significance of this very well.

      In Taiwan, 7-Eleven is not just incredibly common, they are also important, being like a fourth branch of government. There is usually one, sometimes two, 7-Elevens on every block. Even in Tainan, a far more rural city, there would literally be 7-Elevens two or three minutes apart. And along with selling food, software and cell phones, 7-Eleven is where people go to pay their bills, as well as being part of the National Retail
      • In Taiwan, that would be the sixth branch of government (there already being five). Though, since 7-11 is part-owned indirectly by the KMT, it's probably a part of the other five already...

    • Re:7-Eleven? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ProKras ( 727865 )
      There is literally a 7-Eleven on nearly every street corner there. If every one of their stores had an access point, nearly the entire city would easily have coverage.

      I'm sure they already have some sort of network linking the stores. You can already pay your utility bills, parking tickets, etc. there (when you pay they scan a bar code printed on the bill and the transaction goes into the system). They also have copy and fax services, private parcel deliveries, and Slurpees. Its like a Quick-E-Mart and

    • If I'm not mistaken, Uni-President is owned largely by the KMT , the political party of Lian Zhan, Jiang Jieshi and Jiang Jingguo. That makes it pretty significant.

      Oh, and the Starbucks in Taiwan are also run by President.

      • Although the chairman of Uni-President is on the KMT committee, it is not operated by KMT, and is related to neither Lian Zhan nor the Jiang family. KMT has many self-owned businesses, but Uni-President is not one of them.

        There are now 3,644 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan, for 23 millions of people. That's so dense. And it's denser in Taipei.

  • Interference? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @12:04PM (#10865332) Journal
    With all these WiFi networks springing up, don't they interfere with each other? Esp when people are planning to have city-wide WiFi networks.

    What happens when WiFi networks interfere with each other? commercial vs noncommercial? public vs private?

  • the issues (Score:1, Insightful)

    by virtualone ( 768392 )
    they will face serveral problems
    1. a scalable routing protocol. the current implementations are well suited for about 10-15 nodes, more than that is just painful. the future: HSLS protocol with a multipath routing that converges to a wardrop equilibrium.
    2. self-interference of wireless signals. the bandwidth halves on every hop, unless they use a plethora of wired backbone links.
    3. getting this system to work on every platform, keeping mobile customers connected, even if they move from one access point to ano

  • Ssome nations built around citizens, not investors (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cryofan ( 194126 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @12:12PM (#10865420) Journal
    Taiwan also have nationalized healthcare. Medical care is very cheap there.

    I hope you see that many nations are organized to better the quality of life of the CITIZEN, and not organized to maximize the profit of the investor.

    Other nations are organized like livestock ranches built for the benefit of the investor.

    Guess how America is organized....
  • Is it just me or does this remind anyone else of Cryptonomicon in a small way.

    If I remember correctly in Cryptonomicon when Waterhouse first goes to the Pacific rim they are talking about providing messaging back to mainland asia from small terminals in stores very much like 7-11s using a broadband connection laid under the ocean. So 7-11 was bringing connectivity to part of Asia

    Now in this story 7-11 (well, the holders of 7-11 in Taipei) are buildiing a wi-fi grid all over Taipei bringing connectivity t
  • I know where I'm NOT going with my laptop. With that much WiFi and a plethora of idiot users coupled with an insecure transport medium, peoples' private information is gonne be made public in no time flat.
  • Taipeh was given the nickname of "World's largest Microwave-Oven".
  • In the late 1990s, several cities in the US bought into "citywide wireless computing" only to get stuck with equipment that's incompatible with things people use today.

    Municipal wireless is great and all, but I hope the bean-counters are factoring in the costs of continuous upgrades and obsolescence.

    My personal opinion?
    1) it shouldn't be free of charge: It should be billed at no more than cost-recovery though. Even $1/day or $1/gigabyte whichever comes first will keep people from "pigging out" on it.
    2)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Here is my review. $70,000,000.00 / 20,000 AP = $3,500.00 per truck roll. $3,500.00 sounds like a good number on the surface for an enterprise AP feeding a pico cell MESH connecting 200 MESH nodes. Now we need more money for; 1) fiber backhaul or WiMAX backhaul to feed the network, 2) Staff (field techs, NOC techs, planning engineers, tech support, installers, middle management, execs, 3) Internet HUGE PIPE (OC-12, based on 20,000 AP with 30 users per AP = 600,000 clients with room to have an 8 to 1 rese

  • Mesh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @01:21PM (#10866304) Homepage Journal
    Taipei is about 27Kha (2.7megares?) in area, with about 2.7M people - that's about 100 people per hectare. Over 20,000 access points will mean about 1 per hectare. Since 802.11 covers about 200m radius max (about 100m radius at full bandwidth), that could put every AP within the range of 4 or 8 others, or even 24 others. That means a mesh with very high redundancy for routing, bandwidth and high-availability. And even 802.11g (to say nothing of WiMax) offers up to 110Mbps - which is about 1Mbps per person in the hectare. Very dense areas could have extra APs, to the max of about 1.7Gbps, with every 802.11 channel filled, for over 16Mbps for each user. Combined with lots of wired AP interconnects to the Internet, those 50+% broadband users in Taipei are going to get a lot more mobile, in just the next year. Sounds like a great market for Slashdotter app development.

  • This is how things should go in the US. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @01:22PM (#10866319)
    Note that it will cover 90% of the city by the end of 2005. That's just a year away.

    Here in America, we make plans like "Scientists will launch a robotic mission to Mars... by 2009." or "We will return to the Moon... by 2010." We never say "Such-and-such big technological plan will be in effect... by the end of next year."

    We move so slowly, like the lumbering elephant we, as a nation, are.

    Eventually, the more nimble nations will simply overtake us if we don't stop miring every project we undertake in red tape...
    • but they will become entangled in all the red tape. And the giant mother spider will come out and feast on their quivering nimble bodies.....
    • I plan to wash my car this week.
      I plan to publish an article this year.
      I plan to see my kids thru college this decade.
      I plan to retire someday.

      Blanketing a city: this year.
      Rocket-science-meets-interplanetary-anything: a decade is ambitious.

      If some quick nimble little nation wants to bite off a Mars mission, I say 'you go, girl.' But let's be fair about the levels of complexity involved. Planting a few hundred wifi AP's is trivial by comparison.

      Put another way, years ago a friend got wind that a

    • I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual start-date of the wifi network was much later. Taiwan has one of the most expensive MRT systems in the world -- not because it's especially good, but because of massive corruption. Even now, there's an excellent chance that just a mild earthquake would destroy huge sections of the Xinyi line. There's a fourth nuclear power plant on the island that's been the subject of intense political debate for at least a decade and probably won't be finished for at least anot

      • um no taiwan MRT is good. there are more chicks on taiwan MRT than any other MRT. i bet if you go on taiwan MRT and rate people 1-10, it'll be like twice the score of rating people 1-10 on the BART. Also taiwan MRT is cheap. its like 20NT between stops. BART is like 1.25 dollars between stops. taipei is better. its just cuz taiwanese are hard to satisfy thats why the news always talks shit. there is smog but thats good cuz it blocks out harmful radiation. Fire hazards are over exagerrated. go to any americ
  • M. D. Anderson announced today that it will be building a major brain cancer treatment center 5 miles outside of Taipei city limits...

  • This planet. . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Friday November 19, 2004 @02:37PM (#10867361)
    Just because most people have collectively chosen to ignore the inherent dangers of microwave radiation doesn't make those dangers go away.

    Deepening the ability to not think about disturbing trends and to accept irrational behavior is largely the point of fuzzing people's minds with electronic goo. It works and it's real and everybody, particularly in this forum, ought to know better by now, and yet. . .

    The funny thing about direct changes made to the brain are that they are very hard to notice exactly because the organ you use to notice things is that which is being affected. --Gary Busey, who suffered minor brain damage as a result of a motorcycle crash, (without a helmet), explained that he didn't grasp how hurt he was until he realized that he couldn't figure out whether to put his shoes or socks on first, and simply couldn't cognize his way out of the puzzle. Up until then, he just thought he had regular wounds. The world, besides the physical pain, seemed normal.

    The effects of EM radiation within the spectrum and power levels used by Cell and wireless technology has been demonstrated to impede brain function, to make subjects more docile and confused.

    But the spread of this technology is rampant. --The region I live in has cut a deal with the Telcos to install a lot of Cell towers. The tactics used to lock this deal were corrupt; the representative from the Telco was the daughter of a sitting house member, copies of a significant petition were intercepted and prevented from entering the debate on less than legal grounds, and in general, the politicians were arrogant gits with Cell phones. I was there in local parliament to see it all go down.

    Very simply, with the amount of crap Bush and the Military Industrial Complex is pulling today, it is important that the population be as stupid and placid as possible. How much television do you watch per day? Have you gotten your mercury-containing flu shot yet?

    I do notice, however, that the reality of this world is slowly beginning to sink in. The deflating economy, the stupidity of the war, (which some of us knew in advance was going to be another Vietnam), the accelerating melt-down of the bio-sphere, the increasing fascism in the U.S. . . It's all growing more obvious, more impossible to ignore. People are far more often growing thoughtful rather than laughing tin-foil hat jokes.

    Which is good. We're not here to ignore this.


    -FL

    • Wow, get those tinfoil hats ready.

      The scientific community has generally concluded, after years of study, that cell-phone networks, wireless networks, radiation from power lines, radio waves, etc. do not cause any health problems. There simply isn't enough energy in those waves to cause any damage. You're more likely to get hurt sitting in front of your monitor.
      • The scientific community has generally concluded, after years of study, that cell-phone networks, wireless networks, radiation from power lines, radio waves, etc. do not cause any health problems. There simply isn't enough energy in those waves to cause any damage.

        This is perhaps the most prolific piece of mis-leading info promoted by the Telcos. The interesting part about it is that it is true.

        It is true that there is not enough power in an EM signal to damage a cell through energetic heating. This is
  • I wonder if we'll replace cellular phones with Wi-Fi IP phones in citiies? I mean, what's the point of cellular phones in city limits if you can get a WiFi IP anywhere? That'd mean your phone, and your PeeCee can use the same account... And for $20 a month at Vonage you can get a much better plan than any cell phone out there...
  • Personally, i'm with the bloke who noted that he never really feels any sense of achievement from these games. My problems with subscription-based gameplay aside, i've just never felt any particular pull towards most online games.

    Puzzles and all are great, but for me, it's the underlying story that grabs me. If there's no story, but the gameplay is great, I just give it up. It's reasons like this that even amongst FPS games, I prefer those with some kind of driving *reason*, ala System Shock 2 or Half-L

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