Anyone recall the story a while back where a bunch of IETF engineers were attending a meeting, and they offered to fix the hotel's flakey wifi? Part of the fix was getting rid of a lot of hotspots, because when you have too many hotspots in an area they interfere with each other and make performance crappy.
Won't the same problem happen if there are too many people trying to run personal hotspots in a given area?
Yes, but you don't fix it by shutting them all down and making people pay for something they could provide themselves. You make it free, 'cos it's the Olympics and people need to communicate freely.
ps. wasn't my downvote, I think they're useless
edit-- well it seems you removed the part of your comment that called out your down-voter and now i seem pedantic
making people pay for something they could provide themselves
They could. At the expense of everyone else around them.
You make it free, 'cos it's the Olympics and people need to communicate freely.
Go to a club on Thursday night (Thirsty Thursday) and try to have a conversation with your friend. The same thing happens with wifi. Considering the amount of wifi equipment used by the teams at the Olympics, I think it's more pragmatic for the IOC to heavily regulate the spectrum to be sure the coaches can do their job. When it's all said and done, the spirit of the Olympics is about the athletes, not the fans.
Making everyone pay isn't a solution, it's a business plan.
When I go out to a loud club I can still communicate and no one comes around telling me it's against the club rules to try to.
The Olympics would be nothing without our ability to communicate about them. IMHO that's one of the biggest failings of NBC this year. They're doing a horrible job of communicating the Olympics. Opening up the communication channels just brings more interest, more coverage and more excitement.
True, but how many people (apart from journos, who are almost certainly going to already have a separate wifi network provided) really need to be using their laptops to communicate from within the Olympic site? If you want to tweet or whatever, the chances are that you'll already have a smartphone with you that you can do that from.
The NBC debacle is a big deal, and if I was American it would have a big impact on my enjoyment. But this is vastly different, and I'm not finding my enjoyment affected one bit by this ban (I doubt that I will be bothered when I'm down there next week either).
If you're coming from a foreign country, you've probably got a foreign phone/data contract, and probably don't want to be streaming huge amounts of data over it at roaming rates.
OK, lets get rid of the corporate sponsors, and charge £1000 per ticket instead. No, let tax payers in the host country pay more for the event, because as every Brit knows, we are not paying enough as a country, are we? Or lets sell exclusive rights, and then renege on the exclusivity part.
How do people think this all gets paid for? Already the games cost the UK more than double the original estimates. Business subsidises the games, to get exclusivity. Not only that, inside that actual games they have zero presence. So of course they will protect what little they bought. And yes, it is little. Look at the corporate graffiti over ever other sports events, like the football world cup. There is none what so ever with in the Olympic events themselves.
I read here many people being reasonable about facebook and craigs list protecting their assets, but the Olympics cant? How is that? Who can afford the complete costs of the event with out the money of the corporations? Must it be a "socialist" paid for by taxes Olympics alone? Is that what people are saying. Olympic spirit? Well, that costs money.
Choice people, take the corporate money, or your government and the fans pay. Choose. But if you want the corporate subsidy, don't complain about it afterwards.
Or should the Olympics be play out in a field in the middle of nowhere so that no one can watch it at all? The only other way this works is if the UN pays for it, or something equally stupid.
It simple: its a very, very expensive event which happens every 4 years. It needs corporate money to fund it, or no country, other than a super power, can afford it. It has to be exclusive, or there is nothing what so ever in it for the sponsors with out that exclusivity. That exclusivity has to be protected, or no deal.
Do I like that? No. Do I like the fact that most of the big sponsors are not British? No. But guys, lets be real, the money has to come form somewhere.
There is sponsorship and there is selling our liberty.
While the games are great and fun and all that, that the government sold the right to say the words 'Olympics' or 'Gold' is a total disgrace. How was that even legal?
This should never have been allowed to happen nor should it ever be allowed to happen again.
Although it is quite funny to hear the commercial radio stations constantly refer to them as the 'summer of games' and accidentally slip up now and then.
If it needs corporate money why is it still costing London 625m from tax bills and 1.5bn from lottery funds? Only 80% of the revenue from the IOC goes to the city. So the public spends on new stadia demanded by the IOC, does not recover their total expenses, AND loses the freedom to write "London 2012" or to sell chips without the fish.
Articles like this one just highlight the actions that are taken in order to obtain the money, so the public (especially the public in cities considering an Olympic bid in the future) can evaluate whether it's worth the price.
I would encourage any city I live in not to bother with an Olympic bid - between the trademark police, increased security, decreased tourism, and little stuff like this, it hardly seems worth it. You may disagree. But it's good for us both to know about stuff like this, so we can make an informed decision.
There is sponsorship and then there is instituting a ban on selling chips and using personal wifi.
One does not need to follow from the other.
This level of exclusivity is not something that should even be on the table to purchase, as aspects of daily life such as the choice of food in London and the permission for people who live there to use their own legal devices for the purpose for which they were designed, is not the government's property to sell unless we regard ourselves as nothing better than serfs.
Brilliantly put. There's selling exclusive sponsorship and then there's purchasing legislation to exclude other vendors. That is absolutely unacceptable, and is orders of magnitude worse than what Craigslist is doing, which people still have the option of not using.
"The absurdities don't end there. According to Britain's Daily Telegraph, Fish and chip stalls have been advised they are not allowed to serve chips on their own without fish as McDonald's is the official chip maker of the Games."
Chips and French fries aren't quite the same - it's a dolphins and porpoises thing. French fries would commonly be regarded as chips, but chips aren't necessarily fries.
Broadly speaking when we say chips we're referring to any hot bits of fried potato (so not cold fried potatoes referred to as chips in the US which we call crisps). Traditionally they'd be larger than French fries (maybe 1cm square and about the same length) but usually not as crispy. That's the way they're normally still served if you buy fish and chips. Sometimes they're even made from cutting up potatoes (rather than mashing and extruding them).
With the growth in popularity of McDonalds and the like in the 80s, French fries caught on. Most people would still call these chips but they're obviously different so if you want to be precise you'd use fries.
There are also larger chips (the traditional size or larger) that are fried until crispy confusing the whole matter further. These might (or might not) be referred to as chunky chips depending on where you are.
I've only been to the UK once, but I don't remember fries being called "chips" in UK McDonalds.
I've always thought of "fries" as those skinny things McDonalds/Hungry Jacks/Burger King sell, while chips are the chunkier version you get at a proper Fish'n'Chip shops or pub. Restaurants here (Australia) generally distinguish between the two.
As somebody in the UK I'd have to agree french-fried and chips are different things. One is reconstituted potatoe's into small thin like eddibles of a uniform small size and chips are cut potatoes into chunkier like bits.
Where I live, the fried potato-variant in the image is the same thing as fries - we don't distinguish between our variants. We might go as far as calling them thick fries, but that's about it.
It does seem really stupid though. Are you going to go to a fish-and-chips shop, ask for "chips but no fish", get told that they're not allowed to sell that, and then say "OK, we'll go to McDonald's instead"? That's never going to happen!
This is how major sporting events work. It's pretty disturbing.
I don't know about the IOC, but I sincerely hope there's a backlash building against FIFA, and that maybe in a decade or so we'll have a World Cup that doesn't involve governments rewriting laws and such overzealous "protection" of corporate sponsors.
The Olympics is an incredibly complex event, but staging a bunch of football matches across a country is pretty simple, so there's little reason besides political convenience to allow such a corrupt organization to keep running the sport.
This is a sincere question: what losses? It seems that they use 80% of revenue to help the location offset its massive costs and keep 8% for themselves.
Given McD sell a fillet-O-Fish then it could of been alot worse. Still nice to know you can get alternitives from the McD selection, even if there are catch's.
Though it is somewhat scary that buying food is akin to buying illegal drugs in many ways -- pssst wanna buy some chips.
Now savaloy and chips - wonder how that works out.
I think the best bit is that the international organisation for sporting achievement that is meant to encourage fitness and a drive for excellence has an official chip vendor.
Do they offer any of those things in the free McDonalds provided in the athletes village? They didn't the last time I saw it, but that was a few years ago now when they weren't focusing so much on healthier alternatives.
i like your style. might i suggest finding out how the wifi scanners work, and then creating a bunch of dummy wifi connections with well hidden embedded systems (of course, set them up with a hidden ssid so it doesn't interfere with people actually using wifi)? also, fake ads for fake companies that blatantly use the banned words.
Yes, adding noise will be unavoidable, but not broadcasting an ssid means unsuspecting people won't try and connect to these pseudo AP's.
To cut down on the interference caused by the added radio noise one could either hardwire all the pseudo ap's to use the same channel, effectively blocking anyone from using it, or have each ap actively scan and switch to the least used channel at a set interval.
Has there been a discussion around this law in the UK? I don't really believe a democratic vote would have signed it off, so I wonder how it is possible to wave through such a thing with no public controversy. What do the people gain from a 'ban on chips'?
It's an Act of Parliament, and elected representatives passed it. That's most certainly an example of representative democracy. Or rather, the limits of representative democracy.
It is a legitimate point that there are lots of controversial commercial issues at the Olympics (e.g. petitmiam's fish and chips comment), but that should not detract from admiring the motivation and efforts of the elite athletes competing. They train their wholes live and push themselves through mental and physical barriers.
Meanwhile, other people study and work their whole lives trying to cure cancer or end poverty.
I am sorry if I can not really get into the admiration thing. Doing sports seems to be a very self-centered, egoistical thing. The only thing I can accept is that it motivates people to push harder and explore boundaries of human achievement. Also, some medical knowledge might also actually be gained (like how to train effectively - this could matter a lot in a world of office workers with little time for exercise). But for those effects the expense seems a bit high.
Also in the light of those benefits I think drugs (doping) should be legalized for professional sports. Those people ruin their bodies anyway, letting them experiment with drugs can only lead to more medical knowledge.
>Meanwhile, other people study and work their whole lives trying to cure cancer or end poverty.
And lots of people spend their time driving a delivery van or installing windows, but we don't belittle that. Bringing entertainment or inspiring seems a good way to spend a life to me.
>Doing sports seems to be a very self-centered, egoistical thing.
If you have ever met top class scientists and acadmeics, I think you will see, unfortunately, that some of them can be equally self-centred and egotistical too. I'm sure the same could be said about execs of pharma companies. So, I guess I wonder if there are egotistical people or egotistical activities?
>The only thing I can accept is that it motivates people to push harder and explore boundaries of human achievement.
+ the benefits of encouraging people to take up recreational sport - for exercise [more than an @officeworkout though ;-) ]and the friends it leads to. Also for some people it leads to a nice career and gives them opportunities to see the world.
Driving delivery vans or installing windows is actively helping other people, why would I belittle that.
I don't doubt that a lot of "scientists" don't do much of use - all I say is that professional athletes in my opinion definitely don't do anything of use, whereas at least some scientist certainly do. And if somebody cures cancer, let them be selfish as much as they want, they still gave something to society.
Nobody asks to admire pharma execs, but the notion that professional athletes should be admired exists.
As for inspiring people to take up a recreational sport: really? Is that what the Olympics do? It seems very unlikely to me, because the athletes are so obviously beyond the things normal humans can achieve. And if that is the goal, it could probably be had cheaper with some advertisements. Think not only the costs for all the branding, licensing and whatnot, but also the hours people waste in front of the TV.
A lot of the professional athletes from my school use their positions to help fund (and/or run) nonprofits across the state of California. Some of them run nonprofits that benefit refugees in Africa. Others fund medical clinics in Southeast Asia. More than a few have helped raise millions for the cancer research you love so dearly.
You know what they all have in common? Their job is to be an athlete. It says nothing about their ability to give back to society.
Indeed, I would argue that the average professional athlete gives back more to society and creates more value than a hacker who wants to give the world Yet Another Useless Social Platform/iApp/SaaS That No One Will Ever Use.
In my opinion, merely creating a startup is not something of value to society--you actually have to create something of value.
>They train their wholes live and push themselves through mental and physical barriers.
... only to participate in a "big brother meets capitalism" like event. i have respect for the athletes, but everyone who participate in the olympics supports the near criminal IOC.
Should a top diplomat not work for a government because they are corrupt too? Or a talented young footballer in the favelas of Sao Paulo not dream of winning the World Cup and earning a good wage because FIFA is corrupt also?[1]
Using that logic, no hacker should ever work with Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Airbnb, Craiglist...
Athletes don't care about the management of the IOC. They compete in the Olympics to compete against the best. They aren't going to give up their dream of challenging the luminaries in their sport just because a few IOC members take a few bribes, any more than you would stop working with Apple b/c their contract labor policies drive a handful of workers to suicide.
Worth noting O2 are offering free wifi about London during the games and Virgin media are offering free wifi on parts of the tube train system as well.
BT are just being arses, but history has a way of repeating itself, so no supprise there.
Reducing interference is a fine theory, but who decides that one party's traffic is legitimate, and the other party's traffic is interference?
In most sane countries, there is a licensing authority to whom you pay licensing fees in exchange for exclusive use of spectrum, and the person who owns that license is the lawful spectrum user. And then you have deregulated bands that anyone can use without any license and it is on these bands that WiFi operates.
I think the outrage that people have about what is going on here is essentially Ofcom (UK's version of the FCC) is, for this event, regulating an "unlicensed" band that is supposed to be available for everyone's use.
And so not only are Ofcom granting a part of the spectrum to the IOC for free, they are also effectively withdrawing a "license" from the general public. And the people who make hardware and software are unwillingly subsidizing the IOC by creating and marketing and mass-producing cheap devices that utilize radio frequencies that they reasonably expected consumers to be able to control, not reserved for the use of a private entity.
If the IOC wants interference-free spectrum, it's easy enough to get. The outrage here is that they are exercising control over spectrum that is explicitly not to be controlled.
I can't tell whether your argument is that it should be that way or it is that way, but you're wrong on both counts:
Straight from the FCC:
> Today’s declaratory ruling reaffirms the Commission’s dedication to promoting the widespread deployment of unlicensed Wi-Fi devices. It clarifies that American consumers and businesses are free to install Wi-Fi antennas under our OTARD rules – meaning without seeking approval from their landlords – just as they are free to install antennas for video programming and other fixed wireless applications. - FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps [1]
As to whether it should be this way, consider a world in which individual landowners could actively jam police communications, or if every sliver of the spectrum chart [2] needed to negotiate with all the landowners in the United States. No radio communication would be possible. It is about as workable as letting landowners shoot down planes flying through "their" airspace.
Whether or not that reddit post is correct in this situation, they are banning regular wifi and 3g hotspots created by personal cell phones. Which IMHO isn't really draconian but pretty dumb. The olympics should be about athletics, communication, and celebration. Not brand recognition.
Seems bogus to me. Most of the important radios are in low the UHF band (<600MHz).
(I happen to know this, since I was involved in the frequency assignments for the stage management system of the main stadium, and the company I work for delivered all the base stations pre-programmed.)
Even with these rules in place, there must be millions of cellphones broadcasting packets in the wi-fi frequency, even if they are not sharing a 3G connection. I understand why you would want to avoid interference for all official event radio and data, but there are already at least 1500 wifi radios around. Not many people use hotspots, would it really matter?
> Those radio frequencies he lists are all in the FM band, way below wi-fi.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but you probably meant UHF instead of FM. Either way you're right, and a stronger argument is that hundreds of people operating wifi hotspots would cause interference for the millions of cellphones (ever try to make a call at a music festival? get wifi at a networking conference?).
Yes, I meant VHF/UHF. Deleted that, it's an argument I don't want to be in :)
Bad wi-fi at conferences seems to be mostly due to radios with too little processing power, misconfigured radios, positioning and software. There have been successful wi-fi deployments at confs in the thousands.
I'm curious about the cellphone, I never had that problem (never made any calls from a packed front-line crowd though). There doesn't seem to be any overlap in mobile frequencies and wi-fi, other than 4G starting at the very edge?
Try any sporting events in the UK such as horse racing at Cheltenham. It'll be impossible to make any mobile calls due to the number of devices and lack of coverage by the masts. Wireless space is limited too (too many wifi devices) so they can use things like a wireless lan controller (from Cisco, for example) to send disconnect packets to any rogue APs, forcing them to become useless.
Why does this bother anyone? They're trying to stop interference with the vast amount of wireless communication tools they have to use from refereeing to planning etc.
I was a venue technology manager for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. I can't speak for everything regarding how wireless communication tools were used, but anything that was scoring-related, application-related, or PC-related had to run on hard network lines. Wifi was deemed too risky for ensuring connectivity, even on non-Games-critical systems and processes. We had only a couple of exceptions (example: every venue had an Athlete's Lounge, and every Athlete's Lounge had wifi for the athletes). I could be wrong, but I don't believe wifi was allowed for any operations-related purposes.
We literally dug trenches in concrete and in mountainsides to lay fibre and copper, rather than rely on wifi, even where there were concentrated temporary buildings or trailers at outdoor venues.
The only valid uses for wireless that I recall were radios for security and general Games operations (security and general operations had different spectrum, if I recall, with the general operations being further separated into different bandings, depending on the type of operations), plus mobile phones.
I'm sure there were various other wireless communication tools. For example, in rare cases where there was no way to get coax somewhere for TV screens (i.e. like the top of a mountain), we installed satellite dishes instead, after making sure that line of sight was OK. But although I can't think of much else, I'm sure there were plenty. I regularly spoke with the Games spectrum manager about setting up his infrastructure requirements, as they were going to set up operations at each venue for monitoring the airwaves and detecting rogue signals, or overreaching signals. It wasn't simply some man walking around with some device. It was pretty heavy-duty equipment.
But to be clear, things like referring and planning, I can't imagine relying on wireless communication tools all that much, if at all. Especially timing and scoring. The timing and scoring requirements were the most mission-critical stuff. I've never been treated like shit as much as the Omega guys treated me because we weren't finished their photo-finish stuff by the time they arrived, though we were of course ready by opening day.
edit: OK, if I recall, the broadcasters may have wanted spectrum for their own uses. And the press tents definitely all had wireless for the journalists and photographers also. But nothing else crosses my mind. Here's another example how important it was to have the hard lines. We dug trenches all the way up Whistler Creekside to lay down the fibre and timing cables for the alpine skiing course. This way, photographers could take photos of the racers, jack into the fibre via some mobile sheltered switches (they were on modified sleds) we set up on the course, and the photos would arrive down at the bottom for editing and collating before the racers reached the bottom. That way as soon as a result was announced, any newspaper/sports/etc website could put up their article with photo almost instantaneously after the racer finished. That would not have been possible with wireless.
edit2: Sorry, reading this, I realize it's not very well written. Points all over the place, nothing in order. Sorry, guess I'll just leave it as it is.
It also wouldn't stand out particularly much from other BT traffic (headsets, keyboards, etc.); so not nearly as obvious as a Wi-Fi base station blasting a beacon constantly. I don't think your average person is even aware that functionality still exists.
I hope they forbid everybody to talk about it or refer to it, except for some obscure TV network nobody watches anymore. Then maybe in a couple of years, nobody will care for the Olympics anymore, because nobody will ever have heard of them.
Very true, but the IOC regulating what a private pub advertises outside of Olympic venues couldn't happen without the government going along for the ride. "We'll let you host the Olympics provided you restrict the mention by your citizens of any non sponsor products for the duration." Inside venues, the IOC calls te shots, but restricting beers a pub can mention? That goes a little far. I wonder if a pub called "The Gold Bass Ale Shoppe" would just be closed down altogether.
Won't the same problem happen if there are too many people trying to run personal hotspots in a given area?