Arch-cybercriminality-or what passes for it-in Washington state

Had to laugh when I ran across this little tidbit from Freeland, Washington. You've got to wonder why anyone would go to all that trouble to "steal" what would amount to only several cents' worth of electricity. The gasoline this miscreant burned getting to the library's parking lot would have cost her much more. She's obviously never contemplated why counterfeiters don't make dollar bills.

And kudos to the library manager for getting right on the case. A suggestion, if I might: If the few dollars a month you stand the potential of losing via this outdoor outlet are worth it to you, call an electrician and have an internally-mounted switch installed on the circuit so you can turn it off before you leave each night. That might not be a bad policy to follow with respect to your wi-fi router(s) as well if users congregating on your property after hours is a concern.

Yes, technically this is stealing...but it's still hilarious when you think about it.

Why the rush-or lack thereof?

This just in, courtesy of Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Networking News:  Taco Bell unwires-slowly but surely.

Seriously, if the tone of the press release Fleishman quotes is any indication, even Taco Bell's management doesn't seem too enthusiastic about the prospects for this combination Wi-Fi/television package, which won't even be in all 5,600 of their locations until 2015.  That's right-four years to roll out less than 6,000 hotspots.  By then not only will direct competitor McDonald's have roughly a decade-long head start as a Wi-Fi venue, as Fleishman points out, but both they and indirect competitor Starbucks will have been free and open for half  that time. 

And maybe it's just because I'm not the fan of Mexican food that others are, but Taco Bell has always struck me as being more of a grab-and-go place than a sit-and-surf one.  I'm sure that changing that perception is one of their motiviations for this, but once again, four years is a long time period over which to try and effect that change.  It's also still somewhat of an open question whether a scheme that sounds suspiciously like an attempt to replicate the shop-at-home craze that accompanied the rise of cable TV in the 1980s is the best way to do it.

Look for reviews once the rollout reaches the metro...if it ever does.

BREAKING NEWS...

Isn't it awful how the 24-hour news cycle has cheapened that phrase?  I mean, when was the last time you tuned into one of the cable news channels and didn't see a screaming banner proclaiming such?

But enough grumbling-it's Friday and here I am again in the Crown Center atrium, and I'm happy to report that not only did I not have to resort to fending for myself when it came to grabbing an IP address from the router (in fact I haven't had to do that again since telling you how in this January post), but it seems CC is catching on to this public-relations thing.  Boot up and hunt for the SSID down here now, and your eyes are no longer assaulted by the arcane "aircore.ccf" but the more benign and inviting "Crown Center food court."  Hey, it's a start.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled whatever.

Been there and done that, Sam

Interesting guest editorial in today's Kansas City Star authored by Sam Hossain, a student at Avila University.  He thinks KC ought to go all out-literally-by unwiring the city's parks.

Hmmm.  Now just where have we heard something like that before?  Oh, that's right-here and here.  And here too, come to think of it.

In short, open-air hotspots aren't a new idea.  And sadly, they haven't proven to be a very successful one either, at least locally.  I'm just not aware of any place around town that if lit up would work as well as say, the much-publicized Bryant Park hotspot adjacent to the New York City Public Library.  Frankly, I'd be too leery of sitting with a laptop out in too many of our local parks even in broad daylight-and even if the screen were readable under such conditions.  That's too bad.

What I'd like to see as an alternative, as I suggested last winter when I reported on the previous summer's restaurant parking lot robbery-slaying,  is an indoor location with Wi-Fi that would be available to the public either early and late, or better yet, around the clock.  In other cities large college libraries sometimes fill the bill, but as Macenstein noted in the post below, the largest one around here isn't currently motivated to do so.  Perhaps instead of unwiring the parks, the community could come together to pay for extending the hours at the Plaza Library-say to maybe 7 to midnight Monday through Friday, and 9 to 9 on Saturday.  Let's go with college hours on Sunday-how about 1 to 9?

Or let's really dream-that someone with a large ego and deep pockets bites on Macenstein's suggestion big time and funds UMKC's turning the Miller Nichols Library into a 24/7 operation like growing numbers of other university libraries are becoming-and just to sweeten the pot, opening up the hotspot there to everyone.

Hey, you never know.

Forgive me, for I have sinned...

Just had a birthday go by-none of your business which one-and decided to treat myself to something I'd long coveted: truly mobile Internet access, to wit, by tethering my cell phone to my Mac. I know what you're thinking-"What are you, the champion of free and open Wi-Fi, doing throwing yourself headfirst into the clutches of the most egregious form of play-for-pay?" Well, for one thing, I'm probably one of only two or three people still alive who actually does carry a cell phone only for emergencies, which is another way of saying I'm using prepaid at the cheapest pay-as-you-go rate. Those unused credits pile up eventually, and later this year I'd have run into my provider's account limit when I tried to add money to roll over my balance unless I began burning it off by spending some of it on something. And there just happens to be one place in particular that I frequent on occasion where something like bring-your-own Internet access comes in rather handy. More on that later.

Anyway, playing around with trying to read news on that hopelessly tiny screen and enter URLs using a telephone keypad has given me a new appreciation for ath64's observation in October's fifth-anniversary post that cellular-only access does indeed reduce its users to second-class netizens, so to speak. You've just got to have more going for you than that if you're going to do serious work. So...after a little tinkering and tweaking, I'm able to pull up your favorite search engine and mine on a 15 inch screen with a full-size keyboard attached, no matter where I happen to be.

Even if I happen to be in the Miller Nichols Library on the UMKC campus, where the wireless network is closed to outsiders. Now I can't really quibble with that-UMKC, after all, owes more to tuition-paying students than it does to anyone else. It simply would be nice, though, if-perhaps through the largesse of a carefully-solicited donor, maybe-they could see fit to open the Wi-Fi in this one location on campus up to everyone-as the Ethernet ports the wireless access replaced once were. Once again, I realize this isn't a public library we're talking about, but it's not like they're totally unwilling to serve the public.

Seven years is probably long enough to wait for nice, however, so I sauntered over to the neighborhood of 51st and Rockhill last night, laptop and phone in tow, not just to see how my new birthday present would perform where I bought it to use, but to take a gander at the place for the first time since its recent big makeover.

The long retractable power cords dangling from the ceiling are cool. Some of the power-challenged hotspots around town ought to consider them at the next remodel. Not so cool, however, is what they've done with the microfilm newspaper archive-a prime attraction for yours truly because of its more convenient location and hours of access. Before, you pulled the roll with the paper you wanted on it right out of the cabinet and carried it a few steps to a reader, then went to work. Now, you first pay a visit to the library's online catalog-which if you're not a student or a faculty or staff member means you either find a dedicated catalog computer or make use of bring-your-own access to get there-and request that the library's new robot retrieve the roll or rolls you need from closed stacks. Whether said robot actually does retrieve the requested material apparently depends on its mood. Bad enough when you're pursuing research for personal purposes when the local public libraries with newspaper morgues are closed. It would have been much worse had I been a student with a paper due in the morning. Good that there was still human intervention available-in the form of a helpful, competent staffer who got the materials in time for me to go through at least some of it.

Moral of the story: Just because something's newer and more sophisticated, it isn't necessarily better. After all, Rube Goldberg made a career of pointing that out. On second thought, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that no one currently enrolled at UMKC has ever heard of him. I must be getting old.

Wonder what changed their minds?

Google, that is.  After first having spurned the bigger Kansas City in favor of its more diminutive sister to the west, they now want to build out their gigabit network on the Missouri side anyway.

Curious in that one of the reasons they gave for going with KCK initially was that the electric utility whose poles they'd need to string fiber on over there-the Board of Public Utilities-was municipally owned, in contrast to investor-owned Kansas City Power and Light.

You don't suppose that feelers were put out to some of the also-rans after the big March announcement along the lines of, "Well, if we could perhaps work out something like the same deal with you that we got from KCK..." now, do you?  I guess if there are any more expansion announcements elsewhere in the coming weeks, we'll know.

In the end, of course, it doesn't matter.  There are clearly neighborhoods in KCMO where the need for something like this is every bit as great as it is anywhere in Wyandotte County.  So start pulling the wire and digging the trenches already!  The sooner the better.

Your tax dollars at work-at least through Thursday

Just came across this nice little consumer alert from your friends and mine at the Federal Trade Commission trying to scare the bejeezus out of you when it comes to open Wi-Fi. Well, no it doesn't-in actuality it's well thought out and informative, for the most part. Unfortunately, it still shows a few symptoms of Clark Howard Disease-sorry, ath64-as evidenced by this pair of half-truths:

"An encrypted website protects only the information you send to and from that site. A secure wireless network encrypts all of the information you send while online."

Half-Truth No. 1 ignores the reason that the Secure Sockets Layer protocol was developed in the first place-and why it was adopted years before anything like Wi-Fi was even contemplated. Of course it's true that it encrypts only traffic between you and the remote host to which you're connected-what other traffic is there to protect? What the FTC neglects to stress is the fact that the encryption is end-to-end, protecting you not only between the client device and the router, but beyond.

And that brings Half-Truth No. 2 into play. As ath64 has stressed in responding to each of Clark Howard's missteps, connecting to a secured router provides protection ONLY BETWEEN YOU AND THE ROUTER. UNLESS THERE IS THIRD-PARTY ENCRYPTION BEYOND THAT, YOUR TRAFFIC IS STILL SUBJECT TO INTERCEPTION BETWEEN THE ROUTER AND THE REMOTE HOST. So saying that "a secure wireless network encrypts all of the information you send while online" is misleading, because it only provides such protection for that data on its first hop-from your device to the router.

Those criticisms aside, the FTC deserves praise for recommending Wi-Fi users make sure they only log into fully encrypted websites and extolling the virtures of virtual private networks, both of which serve to obviate the need for hassling with access-point encryption away from home. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that it will now be open for business as usual on Monday.