On 04/18/2014 12:25 AM, C wrote:
There are places in Europe where you can get free WiFi while mobile... such as the rest stations on the German and Austrian Autobahn... or McDonalds (most have WiFi)... or coffee shops (the ones that actually serve coffee, not the Amsterdam coffee shops).
Oddly enough, I find it easier to find WiFi while travelling in Africa than while travelling in Europe.
That's interesting, but not enough of an incentive to make me cross the Atlantic yet again :-) It seems the pressure is on to make wifi as ubiquitous as cell phone connectivity. I'm not sure why. Perhaps its really a race between the data services that call phone providers already have and some non-organized wifi providers. Yes there are businesses that provide pay-for wifi service at airports and hotels, but I wonder about the places providing free service. Perhaps restaurants and coffee shops see it as a way to keep paying customers on premise, but then I'm not sure about the economics of that. The projects that address city or neighbourhood coverage in the same way that cell phones do are likely to run into the same problems that the cell phone service providers do eventually -- scientifically illiterate parents complaining about the microwaves from wifi relays cooking their childrens' brains. Of course you could look at the other way round: there used to be many articles about Wardriving, but they seem to have dropped off. Does that mean our downtown business cores and our suburbs not have access points that are properly secured? I pull out my phone and scan and there are about 20 Aps near my home, most secured, but there are a few open printers! The local mall has open access that links to the Internet at a few restaurants and they are poorly positions so accessible though most of the mall. Apart from that there are a couple of dozen stores with access points, some not secured at all, hat don't link to the 'Net. They seem to be local to the store, perhaps POS support or other private app, catalogue or similar. Perhaps they think that because they don't connect to the 'Net they don't need proper security! Despite local storage and the ability to work locally, the whole logic behind Chromebooks is based on telecommuting and that then involves sharing work in the Cloud. That means connectivity. Perhaps telecommuting is seen as a way to address Global Warming by not driving to work :-) Once again I'm not sure of the economics. What I d see is that it will open up more business opportunities, more 'Cloud Services', more 'security services'. But that doesn't make me want to rush out and buy one. -- The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. --Bertrand Russell -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org