The Mayor is going to play out the fairytale of his own construction to the bitter end - and take San Francisco down with him.

Nobody said they needed wifi - Newsom made that up. People would like relief from crap service at high prices from the telcos - so what does Newsom offer? Crap service over wifi at less high prices. We might be impressed except we know better, even if Newsom doesn't.

If Gavin Newsom doesn't start talking about FIBER then those of us who don't want to wait another ten years for decent service should begin civil disobedience and begin shouting down the small-minded man at every turn.

Newsom has been told repeatedly to look at fiber but he refuses to do so. And you, the Citizens of the City of San Francisco, will pay the price.

We told Newsom and Peskin we don't want another franchise. Why then is that the only thing Newsom will pursue?

We told Newsom that wifi sucks, but he won't even acknowledge urgent warnings from his technoliterate citizens. He plows ahead, dead set to sell the City out - goodbye privacy so we can bring in profitco so we can get a few crumbs for the underserved, subsidized by the San Franciscans who have to pay profitco to get quarter-decent service, while profitco counts - surprise - their profits.

What kind of cringing coward is Gavin Newsom, to insist upon bringing in a profitco in order to always assure San Franciscans that none of their money will be used to pay for what they want? To both Newsom and the imbeciles he's convinced, we've already asked you: what other tangible goods and services can we get for free because some third-party fool is stupid enough to go out of pocket for our benefit "out of the goodness of their hearts?" So tell you what, you savvy, urbane, supposedly-oh-so-technoliterate
"gotta have it free, gotta have it now" people who go along with Newsom's rotting notion of last decade's technology: when you do work for other people for free; and when you give people goods and services for free; you - not someone else - when YOU work for free - THEN you're allowed to ask someone else to give you something for free. BUT NOT ONE MOMENT SOONER.

Anyone who votes for Newsom or his juvenile ideas because they like the word "free" hasn't figured out that Newsom can't deliver such things because nobody can.

The network Newsom proposes is NOT FREE. It is SUBSIDIZED by other San Franciscans. Newsom thinks because he brought in a third-party, he can claim that SF pays nothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, "free" means NOBODY HAS TO PAY ANYTHING. If anyone pays ANYTHING then this is just a wealth transfer from some San Franciscans to others, except Newsom can pretend it's not his "fault".

This is a man who wishes to be called a leader? A real leader would dump the stupid wifi deal because it was, is and will be a really bad deal. If Newsom didn't spend so much energy ignoring citizen input, he would know that. A real leader would jump instead on Optical Fiber, because that's the future and it's the only decent telecommunications technology that we can implement now AND it's the only technology that we will ever have to deploy. Install fiber and you're done for decades.

I'm tempted to offer $5 to the first person who can prove they got close to Newsom and shouted at him: "Give us FIBER or get the f**k out of Dodge, a**hole."

I'm tempted to offer $5 to the first TV or Radio journalist who manages to poke through Newsom's propaganda/disinterest network and FORCES him to say Yes or No to fiber so we can all hear and/or see him being accountable at least once during his career.

I'm tempted to fly a peasant from Slovenia here to talk about the fiber-wired houses they already have there. Or South Korea, or Japan, or the Netherlands, or ... a dozen other countries, and maybe a dozen US cities by now too.

Newsom is suffocating your telecomunications future - and nobody in the air media tells you anything. But now you know. See communityfiber.org for one model for fiber-wiring a city. See ftthcouncil.org to see how widespread fiber already is. Finally, ask yourself why you listen to a mayor who claims that 2 is good and that 2 is not greater than 1000, because that's what Newsom is saying. He is as much as saying "fiber doesn't exist, and you should be really happy with unreliable slow wifi, and you should be especially happy with me because I forced wifi on you by refusing to admit that fiber exists."

Do not vote for Newsom if he does not come forward with a PLAN to DEPLOY FIBER. Because if he does not, and he says he cares about his citizens, then he's just a LIAR.

2 is greater, not 2 is not greater - always a damned typo

If you don't understand how bringing in a for-profit corporation can never be "free" with respect to what you want from them, in the sentence "we want free wifi", substitute the word "money" for "wifi" and ask what a for-profit corporation mandated by law to make profits in their transactions would do with such a request. Oh sure - they'll show you how the poor people in your city will get free pennies, nickels and dimes -- while other citizens and the City itself are cutting checks for MANY DOLLARS to profitco for the privilege.

That's what Newsom calls "free".

Correction: fiber is the last landline technology we'll ever need. For wireless, it should be a GSM or similarly capable network - not WiMax and certainly not 802.11 wifi. And we shouldn't worry about wireless until we're well on the way to being fiber-wired, since we need the intervening time to get the GSM network on favorable terms.

Eric:

Part of the problem you talk about is groups outside of the city running things.

So please take your own advice and stay on your side of the Bay.

Plus Fiber and wifi are complimentary.

The constant of gravity does not differ across the Bay. If fiber kicks wifi's ass so hard it hurts in the East Bay you can be sure the same is true in San Francisco and vice versa. The major difference is that whereas Berkeley discarded "wifi" in 3 minutes of casual conversation with the Mayor and the full City Council and adopted fiber in the same 3 minute time frame, San Francisco is run by a deaf megalomaniac who refuses his citizens to know anything about what is on offer to them. I don't need to stop a stupid rush on this side of the Bay to the same bankrupt promise the mayor couldn't push the last time - because there is no such push on "our" side of the Bay.

It certainly isn't an apt analogy but just because I live in Austria doesn't mean I can't write in German papers to warn against the Brown Shirts (people like you who esteem ends with no consideration of means or purpose) and their leader, a man who could not survive one forensically refereed debate with his opponents on any issue, I venture, and certainly on this issue.

We've had enough of watching things go wrong and keep going wrong because we have no way to hold our leaders accountable for their decisions. Here's one chance surrounding a hugely important issue: who is to be master? The corporations and people like Newsom who compulsively feed them against the interests of the people he purports to serve? Or the people themselves, for whom we've fought for more than 200 years to establish a government of, by and for the people?

The people lose if Newsom is allowed to flay the technological swamp of "wifi", promising "FREE" which is a lie, and "SERVICE", which is a LIE. For the same $20/month Newsom wants you to spend on a has-been ISP delivering junk service over a flaky technology, we could have GIGABIT FIBER TO THE HOME instead.

That would be genuine actual service, and anything less would be something less. The Mayor hopes nobody will find out; for my part if he continues to stonewall fiber, I will do what I can to have that stand cost him the election.

Never mind the drinking and the philandering and behaving like a frat boy on late evening TV; what damns the man is that all this appears to be all he has to offer. We could love him despite all he's done had he done anything useful for us - but here, with such a critical decision, he lies through omission to give the City GARBAGE instead of a bright shining future. He has to lie through his teeth to do it. That cannot be forgiven. He's lying in order to cheat your City and you blame the messenger!

I'm writing because people like you exist, Sean, consumed by the Mayor's propaganda. What am I taking away from you, Sean? A glorious 300 kilobit free future? A glorious 1 megabit paid future? No. All I'm trying to do is either make Your Mayor Give you the 1000 megabit future you and your fellow San Franciscans deserve, or GET HIM OUT OF THE WAY so rational leaders in your City WILL do that.

You have no arguments to make against mine but ad hominems against me. You offer nothing better and have no plans for anything even adequate - do you? All you want, Mr. Citizen, is for people to sit down and shut up and let usurpers make our future for us. We want better and we deserve better.

Take your OWN advice, sit on your hands and do nothing. Based on your apparent lack of grasp of the facts, it might be the most productive thing you can do to benefit the rest of us.

While we're on the subject, why not examine some propaganda surrounding this issue:

"Part of the problem ... is groups outside of the city running things."

That's what the Mayor says, isn't it? It's those darned foreigners. Except that Bush has already used the line, Newsom could claim that Al Qaeda is getting in the way.

Show me any group that consists only of non-San Franciscans that has materially interfered (you said "running", remember) with the Mayor's wifi plan. Show me anyone not in SF City Government who has been able to make the Mayor or any Supervisor vote against their own reason and intent.

You mistake the Mayor's facile propaganda for the truth, and so do far too many other people in SF.

Suppose the ACLU or EFF said to Newsom/DTIS: "if you accept such great sacrifices of personal privacy to try to push this deal through, we'll sue you." Does that mean they are running things? Or holding the Mayor accountable through the legal means afforded them? It may have escaped your notice, but a large number of people in San Francisco are members of the ACLU or the EFF or both. I don't recall hearing that any SF members of either organization went public to say that they felt the ACLU or EFF were overreaching their mandates as public watchdogs.

I represent my opinions, not those of other people or of any "group". So far as I know, the only "groups" opposing the Mayor's plan on a continuing basis are groups the majority of whose members ARE San Franciscans. And in no case have I, or have any of the groups in opposition, been able to deflect the Mayor from his Jim-Jones plunge.

So who says it's "foreigners messing things up?" Gosh Golly the Mayor, what a surprise. This is a propaganda tactic, a very basic one. The supervisors bogged your Mayor down - for cause - saying such disloyal things as "let's make sure we've done the best we can by the privacy concerns for our citizens", and "let's see if we can get better free service for our citizens" and "let's make it easier to get rid of a bad vendor later should we need to." And lest we forget, "let's see if fiber would be the better deal all around to spend all our time and attention on because the wifi deal seems at best marginal."

I have to pretend what you think about these things, but I can tell you what the Mayor told you to think, and you will clearly see that you think exactly what he wants you to think: (1) It is disruptive third-party groups, who hate San Francisco (of course), and wish to deprive the good citizens of San Francisco of something wonderful that they could have - out of spite, apparently. (2) It is reluctant and stupid Supervisors, who don't understand the technology (of course), and want to deprive all of San Francisco of something wonderful that they could have, in order to politically embarrass the Mayor.

Of course, in neither case do you look further to see if these things are true. I doubt you have read any reasons offered by the Supervisors opposed to the wifi as to why they oppose it. You are satisfied to accept the Mayor's explanation - meaning his propaganda - as fact without inspection, because he has promised you something. And you think you'll get it! You believe him!

Whether the wifi is or isn't a good idea, whether fiber is or isn't a good idea, whether they can 'coexist' or 'complement' each other, all these things are best understood by listening to all sides of all the arguments. Newsom is making as certain as he can that you will never hear about alternatives nor what the arguments against his wifi plan are. That is the clear mark of a manipulator, a propagandist, an authoritarian, a cheat, a liar, a swindler. The media do nothing to help you - they abrogated their role as the public's information arm years ago without apology (and without telling us.) Nobody in the the major media in this market has bothered to review Newsom's claims for his wifi network for meaning or truth, they just report what he says as if that was all there is to it. The man is lying, so that's not all there is to it, and every major news outlet in this area has fallen down on the job. You fail to realize that the anti-wifi forces have no help from the media - none. The only paper that has caught on is the SF Bay Guardian. Makes you wonder why you still pay money for the Mercury or the Chronicle. The TV says nothing. And this whole collection of behaviors - politicians lie, media report the lies as truth, no followup, no fact checking, and our Democracy suffers mightily as a result: the same patterns occurred most strongly after the illegal appointment of Bush as President, and the country has been in a tailspin ever since, where basically it's who your friends are and how much money you have (and how venal and greedy your intentions are) that qualify you to hold power nowadays. Newsom is taking pages from the George Bush playbook: lie all you like since the media will never embarrass you; hand the people garbage while telling them how good it'll be and how much they desperately need it, even as it's just another bait-and-switch like the last fifty promises from the same mouth; make sure for certain to grease the pockets of your fellow usurpers, because you need each other to stay in power, the people be damned.

It's amusing how much political philosophy this simple little project involves. It's all here: greed, corruption, propaganda, an uninformed electorate, machine politicians and abject cowardice. We're waiting for the other literary elements to arrive: a hero, the truth, some simple justice, fair play, educated citizens - not one of which is asked for by Mr. Newsom.

He'd rather talk to people like you, to whom he needs merely say "outside agitators" and you're on the warpath. He gets to promise you - wowie-zowie, 1 megabit for $20 per month. And you think you're done! That's the end of the story! And I want my free wifi! And I must have it or I will throw a tantrum! And NO, I don't have any time to simple look at the arguments on both sides, and I don't have any time to think much about anything - why bother, that's what I voted for someone else for, so I could assume they would do the right thing without observation or accountability. And no I do not need 1000 megabits to my house because I don't spend time thinking about the flaky megabit I get now and I'd rather the good Mayor win because he cares so fricking much about me (that he told you about 1000 megabits - right? Get this STRAIGHT: He already offered you 1000 megabit fiber and you already refused - right? You turned fiber down after Newsom did in the past offer it to you? I just wanted to get that straight.)

And your good drinking buddy that you voted for will rape you and plunder you all he or she likes, with only yourself to blame. And the best part (for them) is that the media will not even tell you what your drinking buddies are doing.

And all you do is get angry at people who complain about such a pathetic performance from our supposed democracy. The PR people who've been feeding you news own your brain. I think it's time you took it back.

Eric:

I am sorry someone hurt you when you were younger.

I hope that you get the help you need.

All the best,

Sean

I'm sorry you're reduced to ad hominems and I'm sorry your Mayor is hurting you now. I hope he will give you the help You need. If and when the Supes and/or Mayor ask you about fiber, simply say "yes, please, and soon."

Eric:
The majority of your past couple of posts have been attacks( frat boy, brown shirts etc.)

When you mention fiber talk about the price. It will cost at least $500 million dollars to have fiber to the premises and take 10 or more years to deploy.

I think the City should own and operate a fiber network. It will take a bond measure for it to happen.

The Earthlink network would not have prevented a fiber network from being built. On the contrary the City could have sold Earthlink access to the network.

When you visited San Francisco no one would have forced you to use the Earthklink network. The network would have had a nominal cost to the city and we would have gotten money from rent on the light poles.

For those who had privacy concerns, they did not have to use the network. For that matter they shouldn't use their safeway card, or go online with ATT/verizon/paypal/yahoo email/amazon/sfist/sfbg/etc....

9/3/07 SF Chronicle editorial on this topic

"Don't hit Wi-Fi delete key"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/03/EDM5RT7N7.DTL

um kids kids kids. get real. this is how things are done in san francisco.

the original idea wasn't even to wifi the entire city - just city buildings and common areas where government offices were involved, and MAYBE public housing.

but gavin doesn't understand how all this works becuase he needs nathan, eric, alex (oops he is gone now) and big Donnie and Big Getty to tell him what to do.

wifi can be done for free by meraki. and oh btw, the telcos in Japan, due to better laws than ours, have competition and low cost internet EVERYWHERE and a cell phone system that kicks our asses.

but thats ok, keep pretending to know what you're talking about when you use buzzwords like "fiber" and "wifi" and the like, you can be just like gavin and sound all big.

Sean:
>The majority of your past couple of posts have been attacks (frat boy, brown shirts etc.)

"frat boy": mayor behaves like he's in his late teens or early 20's and he doesn't take much seriously (on the program in question.) Who behaves that way? Frat boys do.

Brown Shirts: foreigners (here defined as anyone other than a SF resident) are the problem; and we don't argue points, we 'argue' against the person making the point. We are less concerned with what the leader does, than that the leader should encounter no opposition that is not attacked. Who did that? Perhaps most famously, the Brown Shirts did.

Am I being particularly nasty with the Mayor? You bet I am. Are you or am I responsible for Newsom making no mention of fiber? No, he's doing that all on his own. Not what we elected him to do, but "what he feels like", with no accountability.

>When you mention fiber talk about the price. It will cost at least $500 million dollars to have fiber to the premises and take 10 or more years to deploy.

1. Supposing the average user on the fiber net saves $500 per year on their telco costs. Assuming 300,000 connections, that is a savings of $150 million PER YEAR EACH AND EVERY YEAR. In 3.5 years you could build the network all over again, but no need, of course - just keep saving money.

2. The project will take ten years if that's what you let it take. There's nothing to show that ten years is a minimum. It took NASA nine years to go to the moon; here we don't need to invent anything first. I suggest the network can be largely done in five years or less.

>I think the City should own and operate a fiber network. It will take a bond measure for it to happen.

And politicians with guts enough to lead. We agree on the fundamental point, then. Notice that your position makes you as much a Socialist as I am - and hey, that's a GOOD thing. Congratulations. Seriously.

> The Earthlink network would not have prevented a fiber network from being built. On the contrary the City could have sold Earthlink access to the network.

1. Discussion of "wifi" has preempted discussion of fiber to a significant degree.

2. The Mayor has yet to admit that fiber even exists.

3. The City does not need to be a reseller of inferior service to its citizens on a for-profit basis. The City could vend Coca-Cola too, but it doesn't.

4. Earthlink wanted the City to be the largest for-profit consumer of its services - or it wanted the City to finance the network in part. We can shop for better tenants and "corporate partners". We don't need corporate partners either, except to pay for our lifestyles at their expense, according to Newsom's propaganda.

5. In the wifi case we can't shop anymore though, because all the carriers and other entities that have tried have faced the economic and practical realities of wifi: it costs too much and is far too labor-intensive. And all these outfits now want bucks up front. We could build it ourselves just as they could build it for us and save the end-users money - or for that matter make the whole network
free.

6. What a wonderful alternative: while Newsom has spent many months trying to railroad through an exceedingly dismal franchise deal and the supervisors have held him up trying to fix the deal to be half-decent, Meraki announced that it will support a full-city trial of its network gear. If YOU want to get online with wifi, then seek that out now - because you should be able to get it awfully soon. Notice that neither the Mayor nor ELNK are needed to get on this network, and although it is free we haven't heard that there will be any gratuitous service tiers or artificially retarded service. Full speed free to everyone and the Mayor had almost nothing to do with it. In fact I think he dislikes it. Notice also, no privacy concerns on this network (privacy from ELNK.)

>When you visited San Francisco no one would have forced you to use the Earthklink network. The network would have had a nominal cost to the city and we would have gotten money from rent on the light poles.

1. The number of such citywide networks that can be built is a limited resource. In this case that number is ONE. Therefore if we build exactly ONE wifi network, shouldn't that network be the best of its kind? So what happened to "free"? ELNK gives 300kbps for free. People in Mountain View get 1mbps. Are you impressed if someone says "free T-shirt" and when you get one, it comes with holes in it and stains on it? How much poorer a service could they offer for anyone to still be impressed with the word "free"?

2. Not very many people will use the wifi network in any case. (See point 4.)

3. How many fewer people would need to look for an alternative (inferior) service once they have fiber to the home?

4. There is no way for you to slice the numbers to make anyone believe that SF will derive any cash benefit from the deal. ELNK assesses all costs and ends by saying "we still need to make a profit." They can only do that by selling more paid accounts at a higher monthly rate. They determined that the expected number of paid subscribers could never create the needed cashflow and they bailed. That will be the case for any other vendor with a similar model, and what other model is are there? The wifi industry itself has bailed on the technology from an economic perspective. They'll keep trying to sell radios and sell concepts, but the writing is on the wall: the technology has met its limits.

What it COSTS SF is giving away the rights to the one and only citywide wifi network that could be built, on terms favorable to the vendor but not to SF or its citizens.

5. SF could install statues of Winged Victory every four blocks in SF, and I wouldn't have to look at them if I didn't want to. But that doesn't answer the question as to why money was wasted on the statues to begin with. Another way to say this is that if the Mayor wants everyone to like his network, he has to build it to suit everyone - not just the people who are willing to overlook its preventable shortcomings. Saying "you don't have to use it" should be met with "you didn't have to promise it and get our hopes up, either." Newsom wants to make points with all the voters and then tells the ones with privacy concerns "tough crap, don't use the network." Then he didn't build the network for OUR USE, did he?

>For those who had privacy concerns, they did not have to use the network. For that matter they shouldn't use their safeway card, or go online with ATT/verizon
/paypal/yahoo email/amazon/sfist/sfbg/etc....

1. Imagine that privacy concerns actually BOTHERED you, since they don't seem to. Now ask: do I get to use a network that puts my mind to rest? Why should I as a citizen think Newsom is doing jack sh*t for me if the only network he's willing to offer us is one that compromises my security?

2. Online transactions are encrypted, the analogy fails.

3. Google and Earthlink do active surveillance of user traffic. We neither need that nor want that; only they do.

campaign insider> um kids kids kids. get real. this is how things are done in san francisco.

It's not the way things ought to be done in San Francisco, but it will stay that way until we confront our government over it. We can write cliches about the behavior and accept it (as we have been) and suffer (as we have been), or we can expose poor practices and confront them, which will be useful as people see what can be accomplished through accountable government.

Passive Citizens - abuse them until they defend themselves.

> the original idea wasn't even to wifi the entire city [...]

But it is now.

>and oh btw, the telcos in Japan, due to better laws than ours, have competition and low cost internet EVERYWHERE and a cell phone system that kicks our asses.

We know that; Newsom may, but he doesn't care.

>but thats ok, keep pretending to know what you're talking about when you use buzzwords like "fiber" and "wifi" and the like, you can be just like gavin and sound all big.

The correct name for fiber is ... ? I thought it was "fiber". We have trouble following your advice about "buzzwords" when you refer to common nouns as buzzwords.