Reporters sometimes get basic facts wrong
Posted by Russell Senior on 22 March 2008The New York Times is running a story that mentions the Portland wifi network operated by MetroFi in passing. Unless something happened recently without us knowing about it, the story gets things substantially wrong. Here’s what Ian Urbina wrote, in part:
In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity.
Urbina, or to be fair perhaps his editors under pressures of space, conflate the Tempe, Arizona and Portland networks into a single sentence and consequently propagate an inaccurate perception of what is happening in Portland. First of all, as we understand it, MetroFi Portland has very few paying subscribers. According to Logan Kleier as of a few months ago, certainly not hundreds. The vast majority of its users utilize the advertising-supported service. Second of all, MetroFi has not (again, unless something has happened very recently) abandoned their network, suddenly cutting off service. There are plenty of places in Portland without service, and without any prospect of service, and even places “with” service might not actually have service. But that is different.
The MetroFi Portland network has substantially stalled. The outward signs provide no obvious prospect it will ever be finished as originally envisioned. However, hundreds of subscribers in Portland have not suddenly lost service they had previously, as far as we can tell.
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May 13th, 2008 at 1:27 am
I have been a habitual user of MetroFi for a few months now. I don’t mind the ads, or anything, since I’ve been able to check email, read blogs, etc without the hassle of paying anybody. That said, I still require some modicum of service, and recently, my MSN Sideguide has been acting up prolifically. and if you search Google or MSN for “MSN SideGuide” you get this:
Parse error: parse error, expecting `T_OLD_FUNCTION’ or `T_FUNCTION’ or `T_VAR’ or `’}” in /opt/metrofi/access-server/www/lib/mfAppConfiguration.php on line 3
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: mfappconfiguration in /opt/metrofi/access-server/www/index.php on line 7
Clearly… Microsoft is not babysitting Sideguide. So what are us Wndows Users left to do… Buy a Linux Machine? Metrofi isn’t favoring Mac and Linux Users… Is it?
Apple, Linux, and other operating systems will not be required to download an application to access the MetroFi service at this time.