How many "hotspots" will simply walk off with the device?

Humean_Nature: I think the dystopian angle for this is being played up a bit - after all, it's not like they're plugging the hotspot into people's brainstems and using their blood as an evil techno-fuel. People who need money are being paid to provide a service that Austin is going to temporarily need more of. If it was college students wearing T-shirts and walking around with a mobile wi-fi device, what would be the problem?

*This statement is predicated entirely on the idea that these people are being paid fairly to do this. If they are having their desperation and/or mental health problems taken advantage of, the equation changes substantially.

This. You mean to say that for a short period of time, these people with little or no income will have the opportunity to make a few bucks legitimately? THE HORROR!! Hell, the company will probably most likely clean them up, give them some clean clothing, and probably some food. The fact that anyone has a problem with this is sad.

/I'm with you on the "these people had better be being paid" part

32oz High Life: Another problem for a city hosting such an event is what to do about eyesores like dirty, worthless homeless people when all the big sh*t tech folk fly in from places like New York and San Francisco?

Thank God, somebody finally just came out and said it.

Flying in from San Francisco and New York they're pretty much used to it.

Humean_Nature: I think the dystopian angle for this is being played up a bit - after all, it's not like they're plugging the hotspot into people's brainstems and using their blood as an evil techno-fuel. People who need money are being paid to provide a service that Austin is going to temporarily need more of. If it was college students wearing T-shirts and walking around with a mobile wi-fi device, what would be the problem?

*This statement is predicated entirely on the idea that these people are being paid fairly to do this. If they are having their desperation and/or mental health problems taken advantage of, the equation changes substantially.

The odds of a company taking financial advantage of a desperate social group with little legal acumen are slim to none, especially in America.

Homeless people are not worthless. Many of them are temporarily inconvenienced, and thus inconvenient, but will eventually become respectable welfare cases or employed as working poor, medical stiffs, etc. As long as they have a car or a van down by the river, they aren't even homeless, necessarily. A lot of the homeless are couch-surfing hipsters with expensive toys, educations and tastes. Well, some of the homeless may be worthless, but not literally, just figuratively.

I've read many stories of homeless people, some of whom were brilliant artists (and alcoholics), poets (and schizophrenics), normal people (who lost their jobs and their homes through no fault of their own), hipsters, young people getting a hard start in life, old people coming to a hard end in life, widows whose husbands died without telling them where they hid the heist money, etc.

If nothing else, homeless people can be recycled to make Soylent Green, or, if you can't process them because they have Hepatitis or something, prefectly good fertilizer. America is, as Ambroise Bierce pointed out, founded on the backs of many peoples who encumbered the land before The Man arrived, and now fertilize it.

No human being is worthless. True, if you reduce to them to theirs elements, they are only worth a few dollars at most, but if you reduce them to valuable biological chemicals such as hormones, they can be worth millions. Just think of how much some of the medical treatments cost per dose. Human beings are MADE of those chemicals. They may only have a few ounces or a few micrograms of any particular chemical, but thoroughly processed into organs to keep the rich young and healthy, and chemicals to help the well-insured portion of the middle classes, the homeless are one of our richest and most widely available natural resources.

They're not just people--they are assets. Valuable, delicious assets for the rest of us predators, scavengers, parasites and browers to consume and then spit out the bones and other indigestible bits, such as their neediness, innocence, helplessness, insanity, unpleasantness, etc.

Just as long as they aren't contagious (and poverty is well known to be contagious, at least, slightly) they are a useful and necessary part of society. They are the part we don't feel obliged to pay for, unlike the super rich, the rich, the well-to-do, and the talented.

But seriously, every time I walk past certain outlets in the Mall (they have to plug the floor cleaners in somewhere), there is an encampment of homeless people there on their laptops. They may already have turned themselves into WiFi outspots if they are as stupid about security as most of us, or as people think the homeless are. I have never had my laptop or netbook with me in the Mall, but perhaps some day I can risk it and see who the Hell these people are and what kind of pron they are looking at in between job searches.

I think we should use the homeless to pull rickshaws.

It's a series of cardboard tubes.

So what happens if the homeless guy at my corner decides to amble away to the shelter? Wi-fi has a limited range.

The_Six_Fingered_Man: devildog123: 32oz High Life: Another problem for a city hosting such an event is what to do about eyesores like dirty, worthless homeless people when all the big sh*t tech folk fly in from places like New York and San Francisco?

Thank God, somebody finally just came out and said it.

Flying in from San Francisco and New York they're pretty much used to it.

All this. Austin cannot possibly have dirtier homeless people than SF.

Dirty, yes, but surprisingly courteous. I was just in SF for GDC. One homeless guy even apologized when I saw him peeing on a tree.

Sorry, but I don't pull out my wallet or expensive technology in front of a homeless person. And I ignore them whether they are asking for change, booze, or advertising their new mobile hotspot.

xaveth: Can't we force them to work at the iPhone assembly line or something?

That might make them misunderstand their place in society.

babygoat: TravisBickle62: Bums vs. Dogs

You pit bums against some pit bulls who have gone a round or two in dog fights .... just the bum, the dog, and a 12 foot deep pit, winner take all. If the bum manages to strangle the life out of the dog he wins $ 500.00

What is wrong with you?

New money. I'd only give the bum a $20.

UsikFark: babygoat: TravisBickle62: Bums vs. Dogs

You pit bums against some pit bulls who have gone a round or two in dog fights .... just the bum, the dog, and a 12 foot deep pit, winner take all. If the bum manages to strangle the life out of the dog he wins $ 500.00

What is wrong with you?

New money. I'd only give the bum a $20.

Softy. I'd let the bum keep the dead dog.

This article is REALLY slanted.

FTFA: "Passersby can pay what they wish to get online via the 4G-to-Wi-Fi device that the person is carrying."

Correct, but what they leave out, is that the entire donation that the person using the wifi chooses to make, goes to the homeless person.

So for those of you who were wondering if these guys are getting paid, yes, they are. I have to imagine that providing wifi near SXSW could actually be a pretty good gig.