| William H. Magill on 11 Apr 2005 18:13:46 -0000 |
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On 08 Apr, 2005, at 17:14, George Gallen wrote: I don't know. That RFP sounded like someone was dreaming. I would be more inclined to say, "someone was ingesting hallucinogenic substances." Unless I'm really out of touch with the technology, these two are incompatible: "Support for seamless, in-motion usage throughout the Coverage Area by subscribers with service provisioned through a SP. This includes the ability for subscribers to maintain “session-level” persistence while the subscriber’s device is in motion at speeds up to sixty (60) miles per hour. This capability must be supported with no interruption to applications running on the device. "Support for defining and managing unilateral, inbound roaming relationships whereby subscribers to other Wi-Fi services (e.g. T-Mobile, Sprint) may gain access to the System. WP will be responsible for the negotiation of any business relationships with other Wi-Fi service providers and/or aggregators." Needless to say, we aren't talking about your favorite (i.e. cheap) 802.11x service here - "other Wi-Fi services (e.g. T-Mobile, Sprint)" - to the best of my knowledge, neither T-Mobile nor Sprint provide Wi-Fi service, but rather "packet radio" (i.e. wireless) communications services -- a big difference. Wi-Fi is a specific "brand name" describing a specific technology. On 08 Apr, 2005, at 16:52, Chris wrote: I assume since the city owns this network they will allow their city employees to use it for free. As I understand things, the City won't own ANYTHING... [that's why it isn't costing the City any money :)] For one thing, the City has already set up a separate NGO to issue the Revenue Bonds that will pay for this -- you know one of those things that is independent of the Government, but sounds like it is backed by the Full Faith and Credit of that government, like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac at the Federal Level. I foresee a lot of possible applications for wireless handheld devices in the city. Can anyone find any future plans for any such devices/plans? "They" keep talking about how various City Employees (like L&I inspectors) will have immediate access to city databases. Fortunately, at least so far, they have not talked abut having any of the various Health and Safety (Fire, Police) use the system for anything meaningful. So far, this thing sounds like a classic 1990s dot.com "business plan." From what I can tell, the RFP is REALLY pushing the envelope. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but when the "reality" vs the "ideal" meet head to head I suspect that it won't even be close to what anybody thinks it will be. The stand-by battery requirement alone will blow the costs out of the water. You may be able to buy a transmitter for less than $100 bucks, but you won't get 8+ hours of battery for that kind of money! It will take a LOT of watching to see if what emerges is anything different than what you can get at Starbucks or Cosi. T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8 # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.3.8 # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a # XP1000 [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3 # XP1000 [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3 magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com whmagill@gmail.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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