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Lawrence Lessig went to Europe on an admittedly useless conference but his frustrations boil over into a rant that commits logical fallacies on two points:
A Fallacy of Composition when his experience with crap wireless access at a conference hall in Geneva turns into a continent devoid of wireless access, let alone broadband. Hey Lessig, I'm the one sitting in Europe with 10Mbps up and down to my apartment. What's the size of your broadband?
A fallacy with no official name but which I shall call Blaming Europe for One's Own Crap American Phone:
The Frankfurt airport has now "progressed" to have wireless connectivity at least in the Lufthansa lounges. This is provided by Vodafone. Expensive, ok, but the insane "feature" of this system is that to access the network, you must have a cellphone that can receive an SMS. In the logon process, even though all charges are to a credit card, the system must SMS the password to a cellphone. And what if you don't have a cellphone that can receive an SMS in Europe (as is true of 90% of Americans in Europe)? No wireless access.
Maybe Americans should "progress" to the standards of the rest of the world when it comes to their cell phones. Or would that suggestion comprise an Appeal to Common Practice?
Wow, this from the same Stefan who less than six months ago was bemoaning the "great Irish bandwidth famine"?
Posted by: Felix on December 14, 2003 04:07 PMWhen I say Ireland do I mean "all of Europe"?
Posted by: Stefan Geens on December 14, 2003 07:40 PMAnyway, you really meant to link to this post about getting wireless broadband in Ireland.
It is worth noting that the upshot of Ireland's backward broadband situation now means Dublin is saturated with wireless broadband of the sort my parents were among the first to get 6 months ago.
Posted by: Stefan Geens on December 14, 2003 07:45 PM