I coach baseball and am involved for another couple weeks. Sheesh, I didn't
sign up for 5-6 days a week for little league (6-8 yr. olds). It's crazy how
time consuming (or vacation time consuming) coaching little kids can be.
Sheesh, and the coaches that just want to win the minor B championship.
There ought to be a law! I don't think a lot of those poor kids will
continue next year.
I'd love to find a way to crack the old boy network here and move into the
21st Century while it's still young! Trouble is, bandwidth here is double
what you pay on the mainland (real bandwidth), and equipment costs and taxes
will kill you. Maybe not you, but I am not really sure what your
relationship is with Wayport ... I'd be interested in hearing some of your
war stories though.
As far as the "we're different" thing, it is totally irksome, but I guess
after fighting it for so long you learn to live with it. It really is like
living in a third world country at times.
MD
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "LUAU" <luau@lists.hosef.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 7, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Maddog wrote:
All that is fine but you missed one thing. On the mainland you have
competition, this is Hawaii, home of the monopoly and groups that act as
a monopoly.
I've only been here 2 years, but I still find this "its different here,
give up" thing irksome.
I have been dealing with that for going on 10 years now. I only wish we
would come out of our third world attitude and join the rest of the
mainland in a truly free economy.
Similar things happen on the mainland.
As far as the politicians, they "own" everything. Did you see the news
this morning? Cal Kawamoto, the traffic cam senator, under investigation
by the FBI and IRS. Nothing happens in this town unless you "know" (read
$$$) someone.
Kawamoto has been in trouble before. Rod Haraga is in-trouble too, but
then, the current national administration is looting the treasury and I
don't hear many complaining about >that<, either.
Beer? I'd love too. I can tell you some stories about this place too. I
don't know much about the Hotel ownershuip structure but I know plenty
about the commercial real estate industry.
I'm 'free' starting Friday for about two weeks (though I've got a quick
back-n-forth trip to LA in there.)
MD
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "LUAU" <luau@lists.hosef.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:06 AM
Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote:
And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises
since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will
change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business
requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort
destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's
hotels are going free wireless.
Good point.
I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels
driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it.
Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP
of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way
to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My
response, "You want a heads-down display?" didn't win me any friends
that day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents
protected by the in-room safe.
Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway,
change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO.
Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of
"free wifi" from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end
chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue
Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy
and the rack rate. As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most
people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management
as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or
having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will
be installed, and it will be free-to-guest. I saw this happen first
in the extended stay space, where the guests would preferentially book
rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room Ethernet, and then
would stay where it was "free to guest" (bundled into the price of the
room).
Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of
their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot
and Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to- guest in those
segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring
Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other
chains followed suit. Hilton turned up their "Garden Inn" chain (as
free to guest). Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to even pay
attention to offering Internet access) went and installed in every
hotel (chain-wide) and turned it all on ... for free. Why? Because
their hand was forced.
Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people
who stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access to
their email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications.
And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport installations
(some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as 'free' for the
longest time. It was easier to treat it as a marketing expense than
to make the changes to the billing system to accommodate how the
airport authorities wanted to 'split' the meager fees. And yes, we
could see real results in folks who used the (free) WiFi at the
airport in-turn preferentially staying at Wayport hotels. Then we
got the new Neanderthal CEO who insisted that the world would not "go
free" or "go 802.11" (despite clear evidence to the contrary) and the
rest is history. His "big deal" now is WiFi in McDonalds, and that
deal has several provisions which allow McDonalds to turn it on 'for
free' when they so desire.
I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am
just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if
the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with!
The politicians don't own the hotels, so they have little say.
Part of what makes dealing with hotels complex is that you have
several parties to deal with. You have people who own hotels (REITs),
people who manage hotels (Benchmark, Interstate, Outrigger,
WestCoast), people who brand hotels (Hilton, Marriott) and people who
build hotels. Sometimes one party will fill more than one role.
You've also got they guys in the back-rooms of the REITs who are
literally playing "Monopoly" flipping hotels in and out of the
portfolio.
Moreover, it costs money to be able to charge money. Shall I wax
eloquent about PMS interfaces, credit card charge-backs, and the size
of the customer support department you need to be able to deal with
several thousand locations? Want to know how small those (and other)
issues get when you >don't charge<?
And yes, hotel managers are a capricious bunch.
Just to keep the linux content 'up', Wayport used an on-property
(custom debian distro) linux machine (we called it a 'nmd') at every
location, and still does. You put 1,000 PeeCees in the world in
wildly dispersed locations, with every one responsible for carrying
money back to the mothership and see how you start to look at the
problem.
Then start to deal with 40 or more Windows boxes that you've *never
seen before* attached to the hotel network every night, all with their
own unique collection of spyware and viruses, and some of whom are
piloted by ... well, lets just call them 'bad actors' who are out to
damage the network, send spam, or download things that are prohibited,
which result in subpoenas from various law enforcement agencies (up to
and including the FBI). (*)
It turns out that having the source code, and being able to make
changes to it (fixing bugs, changing behavior, etc), and then
distribute these changes easily (and at no charge) is a "Good Thing"
(tm).
Jim
(*) Back to the subject, if you don't bill, you don't have to keep the
information around to justify the billing, and, as a result, the FBI
(and other LEAs) know to just not bother to ask.
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