The magic hour of 6 p. m. came and went, and although I think there may have been a bit of a hiccup with a momentary loss of connectivity, things have been humming along nicely since then. So while I can't definitively declare the problem fixed once and for all, it's not a problem right now.
And I guess that ought to count for something.
Friday, February 22, 2008
So, why haven't we weighed in on the changes at Starbucks yet?
Because frankly, it looks like not a whole lot has changed from where I sit.
(By the way, at this very moment I'm sitting in the Crown Center atrium, eagerly awaiting the stroke of six to see if the Friday Night Follies of late will recur. I'll update you later.)
Getting back to Starbucks, if you ask me all they've done is exchange one play-for-pay provider for another. Despite everyone trumpeting their new "free" access, a cursory look at what they're offering clearly shows it to be nothing of the sort. You have to buy something, people. Not only that, but you have to jump through so many hoops I wouldn't be surprised to soon see Starbucks' baristas employing whips and chairs to keep things running smoothly.
Will Starbucks ever come to its senses and truly join the free world? Well, they just announced six hundred layoffs today, so hope springs eternal.
(By the way, at this very moment I'm sitting in the Crown Center atrium, eagerly awaiting the stroke of six to see if the Friday Night Follies of late will recur. I'll update you later.)
Getting back to Starbucks, if you ask me all they've done is exchange one play-for-pay provider for another. Despite everyone trumpeting their new "free" access, a cursory look at what they're offering clearly shows it to be nothing of the sort. You have to buy something, people. Not only that, but you have to jump through so many hoops I wouldn't be surprised to soon see Starbucks' baristas employing whips and chairs to keep things running smoothly.
Will Starbucks ever come to its senses and truly join the free world? Well, they just announced six hundred layoffs today, so hope springs eternal.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
In the interest of fairness...
...and to show my gratitude that someone from JiWire actually took the time to respond to my post yesterday, I spent a bit more time there this afternoon, playing around with their new hotspot finder.
I should point out that my initial impressions were based on my having hit the site yesterday from work, where sits a stone tablet brought down from some mountain somewhere inscribed: "Windows shalt be thy operating system and Internet Explorer thy browser, and neither shalt thou have nor hold any above them." Or something like that. Well, what the heck-it's their computer. Anyway, I was so used to being able to pull up that list of every country and state and its number of free hotspots, then click the state and see the cities listed with their numbers, that when I saw I apparently couldn't do that anymore...well, let's just say things went downhill emotionally for me from there. And between running into the browser compatibility issues the responder acknowledged as well as the connectivity issues I described below using my own laptop-upon which IE is strictly persona non grata-at Crown Center after work, I really didn't get much time to take a closer look at the site.
After having done so today, however, I can tell you that once you do manage to pull up a list of free hotspots within a state or city, it does appear that it is indeed just that-exclusively free hotspots with no paid ones mixed in. I believe it was in trying to pull up the number for the whole country (which also used to be broken out in a list) where I saw paid locations. By the way, when I tried this for the USA it pegged at "9999" even though I know there were 18,858 as of January 27.
But that's neither here nor there. As the responder pointed out, the new finder is a work in progress, and once it works properly with Firefox I'll still consider it an asset, even though the previous design was easier to use the way I did.
If I could make a suggestion, it'd be great if you could replicate the functionality of the old "Free Hotspots" button somehow. I thought that choosing the "Free" radio button on the advanced search page would do that, but it doesn't exactly. And if the map that likes to pop up over the page for some reason could be made to go away and stay away, that would be a godsend.
Once more, thanks for the quick response, and I hope I've set the record straight.
I should point out that my initial impressions were based on my having hit the site yesterday from work, where sits a stone tablet brought down from some mountain somewhere inscribed: "Windows shalt be thy operating system and Internet Explorer thy browser, and neither shalt thou have nor hold any above them." Or something like that. Well, what the heck-it's their computer. Anyway, I was so used to being able to pull up that list of every country and state and its number of free hotspots, then click the state and see the cities listed with their numbers, that when I saw I apparently couldn't do that anymore...well, let's just say things went downhill emotionally for me from there. And between running into the browser compatibility issues the responder acknowledged as well as the connectivity issues I described below using my own laptop-upon which IE is strictly persona non grata-at Crown Center after work, I really didn't get much time to take a closer look at the site.
After having done so today, however, I can tell you that once you do manage to pull up a list of free hotspots within a state or city, it does appear that it is indeed just that-exclusively free hotspots with no paid ones mixed in. I believe it was in trying to pull up the number for the whole country (which also used to be broken out in a list) where I saw paid locations. By the way, when I tried this for the USA it pegged at "9999" even though I know there were 18,858 as of January 27.
But that's neither here nor there. As the responder pointed out, the new finder is a work in progress, and once it works properly with Firefox I'll still consider it an asset, even though the previous design was easier to use the way I did.
If I could make a suggestion, it'd be great if you could replicate the functionality of the old "Free Hotspots" button somehow. I thought that choosing the "Free" radio button on the advanced search page would do that, but it doesn't exactly. And if the map that likes to pop up over the page for some reason could be made to go away and stay away, that would be a godsend.
Once more, thanks for the quick response, and I hope I've set the record straight.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Shooting Craps at Crown Center, or the 6 O'Clock Surprise
I'm currently in the Crown Center atrium, and I'm having another of those deja-vu-all-over-again moments. As longtime fans here recall, this was one of the first locations I profiled on this blog, and it's been one of my favorites ever since Wi-Fi made it to KC.
However...
Those of you who recall that long-ago post, or who take the trouble to pull it up, will remember or note that I mentioned this hotspot's irritating habit of losing connectivity, which by the time of the advent of this blog had become a thing of the past-or so I had hoped. I've stopped in on Fridays a few times lately, and ye olde problem has resurrected itself, the connection to the outside world dropping right about 6 p. m. each time, which leads me to believe it has something to do with an inadvertent timer setting or something like that.
There is a way around it, for those of you knowledgeable about how to set up TCP/IP on a client manually-but I'd better stop there, since such knowledge can in some cases serve mischief as well as good. Because the hotspot here is open and publicly available-and advertised as such-I don't have any ethical qualms about doing this. Nonetheless, I'd prefer Crown Center to get its DHCP working again like it should.
I've mentioned the problem to the nice gentleman in the information booth, who advises that what I'm seeing is not the result of a policy change; the network is supposed to stay up 24/7, according to him. He dutifully left a phone message with the IT department, but also advises that there's no answer from either a human or a machine at the number on the little cardboard triangle thingies on the tables. Well, I'll stick around a bit to see what happens and let you know if anything does.
Update: Nothing did. I may try contacting Crown Center's management directly. I'll keep you posted as to the results.
However...
Those of you who recall that long-ago post, or who take the trouble to pull it up, will remember or note that I mentioned this hotspot's irritating habit of losing connectivity, which by the time of the advent of this blog had become a thing of the past-or so I had hoped. I've stopped in on Fridays a few times lately, and ye olde problem has resurrected itself, the connection to the outside world dropping right about 6 p. m. each time, which leads me to believe it has something to do with an inadvertent timer setting or something like that.
There is a way around it, for those of you knowledgeable about how to set up TCP/IP on a client manually-but I'd better stop there, since such knowledge can in some cases serve mischief as well as good. Because the hotspot here is open and publicly available-and advertised as such-I don't have any ethical qualms about doing this. Nonetheless, I'd prefer Crown Center to get its DHCP working again like it should.
I've mentioned the problem to the nice gentleman in the information booth, who advises that what I'm seeing is not the result of a policy change; the network is supposed to stay up 24/7, according to him. He dutifully left a phone message with the IT department, but also advises that there's no answer from either a human or a machine at the number on the little cardboard triangle thingies on the tables. Well, I'll stick around a bit to see what happens and let you know if anything does.
Update: Nothing did. I may try contacting Crown Center's management directly. I'll keep you posted as to the results.
Hey, JiWire, what's the deal?
I really hate to have to rant about another site, but after visiting JiWire today to check for any new free hotspots around town, I feel I've got to vent somewhere. What on earth-if anything-are they thinking? Their hotspot finder used to be one of the most useful on the web for keeping track of new hotspots in a given area-especially free ones. There was a button you could click that would only show you those. You could keep track of the total number listed on the site as well as the total number of free hotspots in any given country or state, and by so doing know when it was time to dig deeper and look for any new ones added. That's where the leads to many of the sites we've reviewed here over the past couple of years came from.
But now...it's all Flash and Java Script, maps and extraneous information. With patience, you can still get it to tell you there are currently 205 free hotspots in Kansas, for example, but dare to try and browse through them and you'll have to hack through a jungle of play-for-pay sites to sift them out.
Nice going, folks. I can understand that you're probably making more from fee than you are from free, but if I owned a site that was the latter, give me one good reason why I'd list it on JiWire now.
I'm waiting.
P. S.: Have you tried using your new finder with Firefox? You should.
But now...it's all Flash and Java Script, maps and extraneous information. With patience, you can still get it to tell you there are currently 205 free hotspots in Kansas, for example, but dare to try and browse through them and you'll have to hack through a jungle of play-for-pay sites to sift them out.
Nice going, folks. I can understand that you're probably making more from fee than you are from free, but if I owned a site that was the latter, give me one good reason why I'd list it on JiWire now.
I'm waiting.
P. S.: Have you tried using your new finder with Firefox? You should.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
A solution in search of a problem?
Up until now, we have scrupulously avoided delving into politics here, even when such a discussion could arguably be relevant to what this blog is all about. I'm afraid, however, that certain doings out in Utah, which we've become aware of thanks once more to Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Networking News, demand at least some response.
It seems a certain group of activists are convinced that Utah parents are totally incompetent when it comes to protecting their offspring from the ravages of pornography-or, more correctly, what they see as too-easy access to it by children. And, of course, since this is an election year, they have had no trouble getting a state legislator to clamber onto the bandwagon with a bill that, in its initial form, would have essentially shut down all free open hotspots in the state. The Salt Lake Tribune-which in case you didn't know is the daily paper in Salt Lake City that's not owned by the Mormon church-has more details.
Before we go any further, let's make one thing clear. Nothing that follows should in any respect be considered a defense of pornography by any means. Pornography is for the most part everything its detractors say it is. It is demeaning to its subjects, it is dehumanizing both to them and to those who consume it, it trivializes what should be the most valued aspect of our most cherished relationships with one another, and humanity would be better off without it.
Nor can it be argued that young people have any business looking at it. Where I break ranks with the Utah campaigners is over the extreme response they propose. And this is where I'm reluctantly going to have to go political. Does anyone else besides me remember when it was the conservatives who advocated withdrawing the heavy hand of government out from between children and their parents? Didn't Ronald Reagan famously declare that government, instead of being the solution to many of our problems, in fact often was itself the problem? Where, in the debate over issues of what is and isn't appropriate for chlidren, did things get turned around?
There was a time when those decisions were left up to two people; their names were "Mom" and "Dad." And what I believe the Utah group, and like-minded people elsewhere, don't want to admit is that they still can be. Parents are fully capable of setting up controls on laptops or other wireless Internet-capable devices they provide for their children-or having it done for them if they're not technologically savvy enough to do it themselves (another "problem" I really don't think is one any more, at least not to the extent that everyone makes it out to be).
So, if you really think that setting Dick and Jane adrift on The Great Cyber Sea and letting them surf unfettered will turn them into Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos, respectively, the solution is simple, albeit one that won't make great election campaign fodder: Empower their parents to deal with the problem, then get out of their way and let them do it.
It seems a certain group of activists are convinced that Utah parents are totally incompetent when it comes to protecting their offspring from the ravages of pornography-or, more correctly, what they see as too-easy access to it by children. And, of course, since this is an election year, they have had no trouble getting a state legislator to clamber onto the bandwagon with a bill that, in its initial form, would have essentially shut down all free open hotspots in the state. The Salt Lake Tribune-which in case you didn't know is the daily paper in Salt Lake City that's not owned by the Mormon church-has more details.
Before we go any further, let's make one thing clear. Nothing that follows should in any respect be considered a defense of pornography by any means. Pornography is for the most part everything its detractors say it is. It is demeaning to its subjects, it is dehumanizing both to them and to those who consume it, it trivializes what should be the most valued aspect of our most cherished relationships with one another, and humanity would be better off without it.
Nor can it be argued that young people have any business looking at it. Where I break ranks with the Utah campaigners is over the extreme response they propose. And this is where I'm reluctantly going to have to go political. Does anyone else besides me remember when it was the conservatives who advocated withdrawing the heavy hand of government out from between children and their parents? Didn't Ronald Reagan famously declare that government, instead of being the solution to many of our problems, in fact often was itself the problem? Where, in the debate over issues of what is and isn't appropriate for chlidren, did things get turned around?
There was a time when those decisions were left up to two people; their names were "Mom" and "Dad." And what I believe the Utah group, and like-minded people elsewhere, don't want to admit is that they still can be. Parents are fully capable of setting up controls on laptops or other wireless Internet-capable devices they provide for their children-or having it done for them if they're not technologically savvy enough to do it themselves (another "problem" I really don't think is one any more, at least not to the extent that everyone makes it out to be).
So, if you really think that setting Dick and Jane adrift on The Great Cyber Sea and letting them surf unfettered will turn them into Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos, respectively, the solution is simple, albeit one that won't make great election campaign fodder: Empower their parents to deal with the problem, then get out of their way and let them do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)