Interview of Chuck Haas on OPB this morning

Posted by Russell Senior on 21 February 2008

We were alerted to an interview (unclipped version) with Chuck Haas (MetroFi CEO) that OPB ran this morning on its radio service. It was interesting to us in that we finally heard a (still incomplete) justification that indicates the basis of their ~30% coverage claim. He said it was based on a population weighting, claiming that 150,000 out of 540,000 people had access to the service. He didn’t get into any details of the assumptions that go into the 150,000 people number. We have previously estimated that on a spatial basis their existing network covers only about 4.2% of the 134 square-mile city’s outdoor areas to the “90% probability of a connection to a 30 mW client device” standard. Our estimate is based on our recent survey of the SkyPilots we did in December, and a 300-foot coverage radius that we found during our testing of the Proof-of-Concept network last spring. Logan Kleier has said that the City and MetroFi are using a 500-foot radius, but even assuming that, you only get about 11-15% of the area covered (depending on how many of the SkyPilots are actually functional). To get to 30% on a population basis, roughly speaking, you’d have to assume that the population density of the covered areas is twice as high as the city as a whole. We wonder if that’s true.

Also, as part of the interview Chuck was asked about SideGuide. He described it as “much less obtrusive”, while the interviewer expressed skepticism of that claim, comparing it to pop-ups. In response to a question about the privacy of surfing behavior, “data on the sites you are visiting are tracked … what is that information used for?”, Chuck ducked and pointed at Microsoft, which in turn was not specifically responsive to the question.

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Portland Linux/Unix Group talk tonight

Posted by Russell Senior on 7 February 2008

Russell Senior is going to give a talk to the General Monthly Meeting of the Portland Linux/Unix Group this evening about what he has learned in observing the MetroFi network in Portland over the last year, and how he learned it.

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

The Portland Linux/Unix Group
will meet
7 PM Thursday Feb 7, 2008
at
Portland State University
in
New Engineering Building
Room 325
The building is on SW 4th across from SW College Street.
See location H-10 on map at http://pdxLinux.org/campus_map.jpg

Here is a Google Street View shot of the building.

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