He explains all the district's hydrants, including those in Alexander Ranch, have had their water turned off since just after 9/11 -- something a trade association spokesman tells us is common practice for rural systems.

"These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines," Hodges said.

But Hodges says fire departments know, or should have known, the water valves can be turned back on with a tool.

One, fires are much more common than terrorism -- keeping fire hydrants on makes much more sense than turning them off. Two, what sort of terrorism is possible using working fire hydrants? Three, if the water valves can be "turned back on with a tool," how does turning them off prevent fire-hydrant-related terrorism?

More and more, it seems as if public officials in this country have simply gone insane.

ATC is an excellent working example of complex event processing.   Radar and GPS provide the basic sensory information to accurately track and trace the position of each aircraft in the area of responsibility (AOR) of a particular control tower/zone.     Naturally,  sensory information is preprocessed and formatted in such a way that the data can be processed upstream by multiple real-time applications.

Before we look at complex ATC scenarios, such as “potential collision” or “aircraft off approach vector” we must trace and trace individual objects, aircraft-objects, accurately with very high confidence.    In addition to tracking aircraft-objects, there is a database of information about the aircraft (ideally), such as make, model, age, range, passengers and other properties about the aircraft-object.      In addition, there is a state-model for each aircraft, for example the aircraft might be “on the ground”, “approaching the runway”, “cleared for takeoff”, “cruising altitude”, “approaching runway”, “final decent” etc.  

Tracking and tracing individual aircraft is what is generally referred to as “object refinement” in our CEP/EP reference architecture.   The reason we call this function “object refinement” is that system engineers are focused on optimizing the situational knowledge about individual objects.     Sometimes we refer to this function as “track and trace” because that is what we are doing to  each object in the model.  In Marc Adler’s recent shoplifting scenario, Marc was interested in tracking and tracing people in a store using imaging processing techniques to estimate their behavioral patterns.  In the same way, before we can process for scenarios such as “potential shoplifter” or “suspicious criminal gang activity” we must be able to accurately process (track and trace) individual object, such as people or merchandise.

Back to aircraft and ATC, the “complex event processing” begins when we are looking about object-object relationships, in this model, aircraft-to-aircraft, but this is an overly simplistic model, as we have not yet added (to our model) ground features (towers, buildings, power lines), weather (storm cells, wind) and other flying objects (known migratory bird paths, swarms of insects) to our simple model.  

Complex event processing occurs when we are processing multiple objects in our model looking for threats in real-time.     Practically speaking, all ATC applications are CEP applications.  This means that vendors and integrators who build ATC applications are also CEP vendors.   

Editorial Note: CEP/EP has been around for a long time and was not recently invented in the past decade as some “inventors” would like for us to believe. 

As you can imagine, there is considerable “complex event processing” that goes on “behind the scenes” to provide air traffic controllers and pilots situational knowledge into the “friendly skies”.   As you might further imagine, the situation is more complex when the skies are “not so friendly”, for example, in air combat situations.   

Processing myriad objects is not the end of the processing “chain”.  For example, decisions are being made constantly about potential damage, alternative airports, and more.    In our reference model, we refer to this, generally speaking, as “impact assessment” because we must take an estimated detected complex event, for example “aircraft collision,” and estimate potential damage based on numerous factors such as, the amount of jet fuel in the aircrafts and the location of the aircrafts (over a large city or rural area, near a hospital and emergency services).   Regardless of the scenario, an impact assessment is normally required before optimal decisions can be made.

This is true, by the way, for our shoplifting example (the impact is different if a piece of gum is stolen versus a $1,000,000 diamond necklace or weapons-grade nuclear material) and other scenarios and models.  Static data (information about objects) is required for accurate decision processing.  

Impact assessment is not the end of the “knowledge chain”.    Decisions are constantly being made that effect resources.  For example, suggestion an alternative route for an aircraft is a resource management decision.    Turning on and off radar or switching to alternative tracking devices is a resource management function.  In our CEP/EP reference model (based on the JDL data fusion model), we call this “resource management”.   This function includes contacting emergency services and directing them to a potential crash location or sending out a message to instruct all aircraft to stay off a certain radio frequency.  Resource management is critical.

Our simple ATC model today is by no means complete, it just scratches the surface.  In fact, I have a very close friend, Mark Secrist, who is a former Marine fighter pilot and currently a senior captain for American Airlines.   I have asked Mark to read this post and help me further refine this crude “laymans” ATC model (Thanks Mark!).

MetroFi was one of the three most prominent pure play metro-scale Wi-Fi firms, if you count EarthLink's municipal wireless division as a separate operation, and Kite Networks, which was a subsidiary of a larger telecom firm. Each company had made a unique network hardware choice--MetroFi, SkyPilot; Kite, Strix; and EarthLink Tropos plus Motorola--and each had a sort of specialty. Interestingly, a fifth firm, BelAir powers Toronto (a small but super-fast Wi-Fi network) and Minneapolis (the only putatively completed large-city Wi-Fi network), and will be behind Cablevision's nearly $350m New York Wi-Fi plan.

MetroFi was the only major firm to back ad-supported no-fee access, coupled with paid, no-ads service, and higher tiered commercial offerings. They built mostly smaller cities, with Portland being their only real big city win. The firm began with the notion of building Wi-Fi out gradually as a way to provide broadband in communities that lacked service, with no municipal involvement. That plan required sparser networks and typically a home signal booster designed by SkyPilot. (Kite mostly focused on the Southwest; EarthLink on big cities.)

EarthLink was in many ways largely responsible for the mess that all Wi-Fi providers found themselves in last year by offering to build Philadelphia's network back in 2005 at no cost to the city--in fact, paying the city and the local utility fees. That set the stage for nearly all the RFPs that followed where, if EarthLink were a bidder or the city was aware of the alternatives, the notion was that no city dollars would be spent, even if taxpayer money wasn't "at risk"--that is, even if a city could save money by switching current line items in their telecom and data budget to a wireless network.

Haas noted via email that MetroFi has been working towards anchor commitments by cities for nearly two years, but the inertia of those early networks led municipalities to reject those options. In Toledo, where MetroFi had negotiated an anchor commitment, a change in administration led a new mayor to retreat from the plan.

Is there a future for metro-scale Wi-Fi? Yes. With thoughtfully constructed, outdoor-focused deployments centered on municipal purposes, with public access a secondary issue, it seems like these networks could still provide an inexpensive way for relatively high bandwidth compared to the alternative of cell data networks.

However, that advantage is likely short lived in larger markets. The near-future certainty now that there will be multiple provides offering wired broadband speed service starting later this year with Sprint/Clearwire's WiMax, and continuing through into 2012 with significant network buildout by Verizon and AT&T in several bands (including their new 700 MHz holdings).

While Sprint/Clearwire is talking about 120m to 140m homes passed by 2010 with their network, obviously focusing only on major markets, many of the 700 MHz licenses purchased by AT&T and Verizon carry buildout requirements with penalties. So cities outside the top 100 population markets and rural areas will still see some benefit. In those mid-tier markets, there's also the 3.65 GHz band for shared licensed use, which is a model that Azulstar is pursuing with new WiMax deployments, as I wrote about recently.

Competition will likely push the cost of mobile broadband far below its $60 per month 2-year contract rate of today, which then would beg the question why a city or county with good commercial coverage would need to build its own Wi-Fi network. There are still plenty of reasons to build dedicated, first-responder 4.9 GHz public safety networks, of course.

I've always described Wi-Fi on a metropolitan scale as the best, worst technology. The best, because everyone has Wi-Fi in their laptops and increasingly in handhelds and gadgets. The worst, because the technology is absolutely not designed for the purpose, unlike CDMA and GSM evolved cell standards and mobile WiMax.

It's possible that in the long term, looking five years out, that Wi-Fi on a metro-scale will only be needed in small towns, odd markets, and for highly particular purposes. Or, perhaps in a bit of irony, where companies like Cablevision feel Wi-Fi is necessary to retain the loyalty of their highly wired customer base.

Another interesting factoid from the original article:

Citing a March 2008 survey conducted by marketing research services provider Decipher, Yahoo and McAfee claim that 65% of Americans online are more worried about clicking unsecured search listings than the threat of neighborhood crime, getting one’s wallet stolen, or e-mail scams. Unfortunately, Decipher hasn’t posted this survey online, making it harder to divine why so many people supposedly prefer being pistol-whipped and robbed to a malware infection.

Being as I live in Oakland, California, an area known for serious crime, I think those results are pretty funny. I don’t worry so much about malware (maybe it’s just cuz I have a Mac), but I do worry about getting mugged–though I never have. But maybe the people surveyed were from safe, suburban and rural towns, living in cozy sprawling homes where they keep their front doors unlocked.

Maybe now when they tuck their kids in at night, they’ll feel a bit safer when they go downstairs and look stuff up online.

Internet Archive offers fiber-based service to public housing project: Forget Wi-Fi. How about 100 Mbps to each apartment in a 260-unit project (Valencia Gardens)? That's Brewster Kahle, Internet pioneer and all-around good guy, written large. His efforts intend to put high-speed service into 2,500 units, mostly by the end of the year. The project ties into city-owned fiber, and is routed through the archive's high-speed NOC. With this project and the Meraki Free the Net mesh effort, San Francisco could move out of the status of a developing nation in terms of widespread broadband access.

Boston Wi-Fi project launches: The first pilot project under the direction of Openairboston launched today, with a square mile in Roxbury and Dorchester, passing about 8,000 homes. Service is free for 30 days, then $10 per month thereafter.

Open Range Communications gets $267m loan for rural broadband: The funds are intended to push service into an extraordinary 518 rural areas across 17 states. They've raised $100m privately, too, GigaOm reports. They won't deploy just one set of technology, but will sublet spectrum and use a satellite range for ground service, Om Malik writes.

Chrysler will put Wi-Fi into cars: Bloomberg News reports that Chrysler intends later this year to offer dealer-installed cellular Internet links in cars. The Chrysler chief for this effort misuses the term Wi-Fi, though, as it's cell data with car drivers required to obtain a cell subscription. The service will move to factory-installed after 2008. There's not much detail on what drivers and passengers will be able to use the service for in this brief article.

Wi-Fi chip shipments dectupled in five years; revenue quintupled: ABI Research notes that 440m Wi-Fi chipsets will ship in 2008, 10 times greater than in 2003. However, revenue is just 5 times higher, which shows how even with more advanced chips in the mix, the race to the bottom continues. Broadcom was the leading vendor in ABI's analysis.

Kim Hyten, emergency management director in Putnam County, said he didn't realize homeland security grants can now be used to prepare for tornados. As a result, Putnam County is using its grant money to prepare for something else.

"Weapons of mass destruction," Hyten said.

That's right -- weapons of mass destruction. This year, Putnam County spent most of its $58,000 homeland security grant to buy dozens of gas masks, boxes full of chemical suits, a plutonium-detecting gamma and neutron rae radiological monitor and, for good measure, this rural county about fifty miles west of Indianapolis also ordered plenty of weapons of mass destruction test strips.

But asked whether weapons of mass destruction are a concern, Hyten replied: "The weapons of mass destruction -- I don't believe this county has ever, when we did our terrorism protection plan, ever looked at that we'd be a targeted site."