CEDX

When all you have is a hammer...

Every problem looks like a nail.  I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with both Tom Evslin and Sascha Meinrath on their analysis regarding this article in the New York Times and their posts about it here (Tom's) and here ( Sascha's ).  The issues that I have with Tom's take, is that most cops just want a working radio, and don't want to have to be dealing with a crashing smartphone when chasing somebody, and, to put police and life safety communications on a protocol and WLAN technology that can be so easily screwed up by somebody interfering with it, is just begging, begging for disaster.  Sometimes open source or open spectrum is not the magic bullet in this case. 
Also, the estimates of how much it would cost to blanket the entire City of New York and the subways are just way off base.  Do you know how much the union prevailing wage is for electricians in New York?  Do you know how expensive it is to use that labor in the middle of the night which is when the installations need to be done?  Also, throwing a bunch of wi-fi radios in the subway is not going to work.  The preferred method for signal distribution in buildings and tunnels is leaky coax and distributed antenna systems.  It was true in '98, and it remains so today. 

LIMBA and Long Island Culture

After too long a hiatus, I returned to LIMBA this past friday, where we had the pleasure of hearing Rob Dippel, the director of Development for the Long Island Museum of Art, History, and Carriages, formerly known as the Museums at Stony Brook.  (Somebody there had the foresight to get a good domain name.) In keeping with it's focus on the Long Island, the first suburb in the US; the Museum is currently showing an exhibit on Levittown, described in this Newsday Article.  The museum was founded by Ward Melville.  Growing up, I had always heard the name, but until writing this post didn't really get who the guy was.  As my dear friend Dr. Hersly would say, "He was a Big Macher" on the North Shore.  Thom McAn shoes, and the progenitor of CVS drugstores.  Not a bad legacy, eh?

Good People Doing Good Works

My friends over at Housing Help ( I should really help them out with a domain name ) are sponsoring a debt management seminar on Feb 3.  Most of the blogosphere probably doesn't need it, but here's a link to the PDF for registration.

Long Island Wireless Network RFP Due Soon

It looks like the long awaited RFP is coming out soon, according to Richard Galant's column in today's Newsday.  In his profile of Suffolk IT Czarina Sharon Cates-Williams, Ms. Williams says she hopes to issue the RFP this week.  Esme thinks it's more significant than San Franscisco's project.  It's certainly more significant to me, as it has the possibility of de facto condemnation of my business, Fire Island Wireless.  I would still like to see the RFP, hoping it has requirements geared towards helping solve some of the island's woes, like driving use of mass transit, revitalizing downtowns, and how ( or if ) it addresses the competition with existing unlicensed wireless providers.