Not-so-smart meters, int'l protest 10/4

[pahoated]

A smart meter is just a wireless transmitter to a receiver on a pole nearby, like wifi. How is that worse than people driving in trucks from meter to meter to get a reading, looking at their wages, how much gas they are using, the possibility for reading error?

I come from a truly Orwellian place, which has numerous power outages due to falling trees, and the utility there decided to run a fiber optic line along the power lines to provide real time monitoring, as well as accept smart meter data. It needed to be fatpipe with little traffic, resulting in huge excess bandwidth. This is the insidious, nefarious, soul sapping result -- free internet:

quote:

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http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/sep/3...d-program/
Poulsbo gets pilot fiber-optic broadband program

POULSBO — Lightning-fast broadband has been added to some parts of Poulsbo's downtown. And for now, it's free.

The Kitsap Public Utility District installed a $7,000 antenna to the First Lutheran Church on Fourth Avenue about three weeks ago, according to Stephen Perry, superintendent of telecommunications.

The installation in Poulsbo kicks off a pilot program aimed at putting to use some 120 miles of fiber-optic cable already installed all over the county. This is the first time the public utility district, which will manage and pay for the program, has offered this service. There's also another 100 miles of fiber cable installation planned for the county, according to the district's website.

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It's more than a bit humorous that the same grid conspiracy neoluddites want to spread their message of mind control hysteria on the greatest grid devised by humans so far: the Interwebz.