Get Ready For the High-tech Beach 247
coondoggie writes "Ocean City, New Jersey is a nice, family-oriented beach that will apparently soon be the high-tech model for seashore lovers and now perhaps geeks everywhere. The city has on its plate a $3 million plan for myriad public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips (RFID) and Wi-Fi wireless technology. A wireless network will let Ocean City expand economic development and control the cost of local services. Wireless allows the City to save on cell phone usage, T-1 lines, and it adds efficiency. The city is looking to replace its ubiquitous but mostly annoying beach tags — which indicate you paid to get on the beach $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the whole summer — with wristbands that contain an RFID chip. Yet another cool feature of the high-tech beach will be the ability to track beachgoers — an application that is being touted by parents."
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I have to agree... -sigh- While this would be great to find your children, should they be unruly or kidnapped, nobody else has a use for this. And the kids would rip it off if they didn't want to be tracked (they're unruly) and the kidnapper would rip it off, too. It's no better than the slips of paper, and probably quite a bit more expensive to implement -and- maintain.
So who is it better for? People that want to track you. That's it. You can't very well throw anyone out that managed to break theirs (on purpose or not) as they paid their money and can't be held accountable for the technology failing.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of putting the tags on a flimsy wristband, why not inject them into the patron's blood stream. It may also worry some of you that a kidnapper may just take the kid off of the beach thereby eliminating the ability to track and monitor. This is why it is necessary to expand the sensing to a full nationwide, or better yet worldwide scale.
I'm big brother, and I'll keep an eye out for you.
RFID Teeth (Score:2)
Belgian implants RFID chip in tooth [theregister.co.uk]
At least you will know where your dentures are, if you lose them.
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Pardon me for asking, but why are beach tags or RFIDs necessary in the first place? Is the beach in question not a public one? If so, why does
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
They get paid for somehow, and if you don't charge admission, you have to charge taxes. Why should people who never go to the beach have to pay for it? I personally hate it (phobia) and never go. When I used to go, nobody ever complained about the admission fee.
I think maybe you've been spoonfed by the government too much if you think everything 'public' should be 'free'. I feel exactly the opposite and people that wish to use a public service should be the ones supporting it. Emergency services/etc are the obvious exception, of course.
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True, but taxes are more efficient. The amount of overhead you create by charging per user is enormous - you need to put a payment system in place, need to distribute the tags, need to pay people to monitor the system isn't bypassed, etc. It's the same thing as with paying the same postage rate, no matter whether your letter travels a short distance (e.g. within NYC) or a long one (e.g. from Austin to Washington). Paying a flat rate is less fair, bu
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I've never driven on 90% of the interstate highways in this country, so why should my federal tax dollars be used to build & maintain them?
I've never needed to go to the emergency room either, so why should I have to pay taxes to support those frivolous hospitals?
My house has never been attacked by a foreign nation, so why should I foot the bill for our trillion dollar armed forces?
Get the point?
I hate the beach as much as you; it's
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While so much money is being pumped into the global arms race I think it's silly to pinch pennies about keeping public property clean. (Though I do prefer less government spending as opposed to more, I think people have their priorities wrong.)
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The beaches are kept safe and clean. People do complain about the cost of the beach tag, but when you consider that people often dr
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Although if you're one of those being tracked, it can be more convenient for you, too. Both in the beach pass situation and the customs/passport situation, being able to be cleared as authorized without having to interact with an enforcement official can actually be quite convenient and pleasant.
I'm not a big fan of this kind of thing -- the possibilities for sliding down the slippery slope towards abuse are endless -- but we have to recogni
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Security Patrolman: Yea I'm watching them now.
Security Monitor Guy: Why does your voice sound distant?
Security Patrolman: The walkie talkie is on the ground coz my hands are... occupied.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Big Brother hell!
What happens when the sharks get wind of this? Not only will they have frickin' lasers on their heads, they'll be able to track our every move with their radio direction sensors.
Those chips'll be inside fish in no time, you mark my words...
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I live in the land of the free. (Score:5, Funny)
WTF: you paid to get on the beach $5 per day - Australia may suck big sweaty pendulous donkey balls, but at least we don't have to pay for our beaches.**
* Not so good as the land of the free biatches
** Please return to your scheduled why-noone-needs-wireless-on-the-beach flamefest.
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Michael Moore's TV Nation where somewhere in the North Eastern US had private (district residents only) beaches, which is even worse. The land of the selfish seems to be a better motto.
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Michael Moore's TV Nation where somewhere in the North Eastern US had private (district residents only) beaches, which is even worse. The land of the selfish seems to be a better motto.
So there are private beaches. There is no reason for every stretch of the coastline to be 100% public access, just as there is no reason for every acre of forest to be 100% public access. Is it that hard to imagine that some people would want to find a quiet little area on the ocean to setup a home. A home that doesn't have a flock of people who have no regard for the residents of the area tramping through their backyards to camp out on that little section of beach. Not every piece of coastline has to
Re:I live in the land of the free. (Score:5, Interesting)
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My family rents a home in North Carolina that sits right on the ocean. There are public access paths just a few meters up and down the road. However, you get a large number of people who will wander under the house with all of their gear to setup camp.
"A few meters..." as in a quarter of a mile. If it REALLY was easier to use the access paths, EVERYONE would be doing it. People are probably going under your house because there is no parking anywhere near the access paths. Are you going to volunteer your house for demolition to build a parking lot for visitors?
People, especially rich people, have to accept the fact that they are not islands. If you live near a PUBLIC resource like the beach, or a park, or an airport, you have to accept noise and discomfo
Re:I live in the land of the free. (Score:4)
It's for good reason. The individual communities are responsible for maintaining the beaches. This includes cleaning (people leave a ton of trash on the beach), life guards, and sand. Most of the communities along the Jersey shore lose a lot of sand to erosion during the winter and have to periodically buy sand to put on the beaches. This all costs money. There's no reason why only the residents of the communities should bear the cost of this.
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there are some wealthier commmunities along the shore where the residents think they own the beach.
They do the same thing in south Florida. Sometimes, it's even the same people with their second home. It's disgusting but there are people who live within a mile or two of the ocean who've never been to the beach.
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Balmedie ftw.
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Picture #1 [beachwizard.com]
Picture #2 [belhelvie.org.uk]
I actually know more than a fair bit about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
10$ is the price for a week
5$ is the price for a day.
(btw, if you snap them up early, it's 15$% for the season)
This pays for the
1- DAILY sweeping of the beach with a big ol' sand rake machine along the heaviest portion of the beach (directly in front of the 20 block boardwalk) which sifts through the sand
and the intermittent raking of other beaches
2- the lifeguards
3- the trash removal off the beach/emptying the trash cans...
strangely, (and I originally found it shocking too) it works.. much like the toll roads, it's a pay to play system.. the nicer motels in town (see my homepage) include them with your stay.... so do most of the condo rentals.. so for those folks, it's free/subsidised by direct spending at area businesses (in my case, a motel) and day trippers also pay in proportion to the # of dollars they leave in the town (i.e. little) someone enriching my business at a few hundred a night doesn't pay the 'tax' directly, but indirectly... someone who comes into town for 8 hours pays more... beacause their direct benefit to the towns economy is a whole lot less....
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No they're not - the tax burden is just shifted (Score:3, Informative)
Just like gas prices. In america we think we only pay 3-4$ per gallon, while in Europe, they pay $7. However, most Americans forget that we just spent a TRILLION dollars make sure the oil keeps coming.
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Must be a New Jersey thing (Score:2)
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Not that these are real beaches anyway. It's not quite as bad as an English beach but don't expect Bay Watch.
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Sure, businesses do better, but a lot of the tourism doesn't really improve property values enough (luxury homes do just as well) to make up for the expensive services NJ shore municipalities provide. Emergency services, policing, etc.
It's only just that those who visit a
Wildwood doesn't charge (Score:2, Informative)
not all (Score:2)
Wildwood NJ is free, if you have a half hour to trudge from boardwalk to waters edge each time.....
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You obviously are not a New Yorker; they do not refer to NJ as the "armpit of America" -- it's only ignorant midwesterners, westerners, mountain-staters, southerners, and New Englanders who do so.
New Yorkers have far too much wit to call NJ something so last-year as "the Armpit...". What you'll find
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You might want to re-examine that. Excluding housing, NJ cost of living is higher than CA. Total taxes are the highest in the nation, auto insurance costs are the highest in the nation.
The COL index [mo.gov] for CA is 138.9 for 1st qtr 2007, NJ is 130, so they are pretty close in total. Also, if you exclude the nastier parts of NJ (I'm sure the same is true for CA) that cost skyrockets.
Re: housing, the CW is that the CA market has longer to fall when there is a readjustment (or,
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"Nearly everyone" you met from New York seemed to be rude to you, eh? Perhaps you were the asshole by showing up with your prejudiced concepts of how 10 million people can act and think in lockstep because they happen to currently reside in the same area.
Is this article meant to be flamebait? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which doesn't mean I am not going to fall for the bait.
Man, is this a stupid idea OR WHAT?
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You're still right, it's technology for technology's sake.
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A technophile and a technophobe can come to the same conclusion that one aspect of technology is invasive or unnessecary, but that does not mean the technophile is now a technophobe, or that they both used the same logic to get to that conclusion. On the contrary - an understanding of technology makes you more acutely aware of its disadvantages.
Calling someone who is concerned with how technology affects people's privacy rights a Luddite
Is this a joke? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
RFID people tracking (Score:3, Funny)
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Sorry, she's not available.
You get the unusually hairy guy with bad breath. Bummer dude.
Wrong Spin (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as wifi on the beach little people will use it, but most people will be using it in the city where the wifi also is.
RFID tags: great for your kids, wonderful idea.. but not everyone will want these, should be optional.
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She sells... (Score:2, Funny)
One thing beaches do need (and this aint it) (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are quite a few thieves out there that see unattended storage as a beacon, where leaving your wallet in your car or house or hotel room, hidden, isn't so much of a beacon.
I'm sure the headache of people that lose their key/combination or are just plain scamming is another large part of
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Just.... don't bring anything valuable or bring friends.
B.
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If you'd ever been a lifeguard, you'd definitely see the value of a way to track kids who have wandered off. Reconnecting little kids and parents (or older siblings) is about 40% of what you do on a normal beach, and I can't imagine how much there is on a zoo-like beach like this.
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1) Vandalism -- there are always dicks who destroy stuff just to be destroying something.
2) Drug couriers using them for drops.
As to TFA, it seems to me that having a high tech beach is contrary to the whole purpose of going to the beach!!
Tho I'm reminded of an ad for Netware 5.5, where several Netware engineers are lounging on a tropical beach.... while doing a remote Netware install back at the office.
Wi-fi on the beach (Score:2)
About Time, sort of (Score:2)
However I agree with RFID complaints. Right now teenagers stand at the top of the steps leading down to the beach, and 'check' that you have you beach tags. Most
Actually, they intend to blanket the ENTIRE island (Score:2)
I've been following this story closely.. and the RFID stuff just came out in the last few days..
My hotel, stopped plans to expand it's wifi access point to cover the entire building because the city announced blanket coverage over the entire island...
Now it turns out the city plans to charge a fee of 6-9$ a day, and upto $30something a week..
(my hotel btw only charges $1.00 a day and $5.00 a week- and that only because it solves more problems than offering it for
Savings? (Score:2)
How's that? Do they honestly think they can build a wireless network with sufficient capacity for an entire city? Presumably, they want to replace local T-1 connections (from the telecom exchange to customers) with WLAN. But with the limited number of channels available, they'll run out of bandwidth in no time (esp. near the exchange).
they expect (Score:2)
the plans include all city workers who travel around town using wifi/ip phones...
(no cells) and all incity network traffic to stay on this network...
Get ready (Score:3)
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A Call for National Wireless (Score:2)
We should have broadband wireless in the entire northeast corridor, and along all the major highways and railways. All the trains, commuter and Amtrak, should also offer free public wireless service. How much could it co
I read it wrong (Score:2)
Why beach access is not free (Score:5, Informative)
Ocean City has a large life guard staff. A lot of people (esp. from Philly) visit this beach. The guards aren't just guys sitting around getting a tan-- they actively monitor the beach. There's a stand every hundred yards or so, with 2-3 guards to a stand. I estimate at least 200 lifeguards are on the beach on a normal day. In a given week, I've seen 3-4 saves done.
By using the beach during lifeguard hours, you automatically give them consent to perform first aid, saves, CPR, etc. in the event of an emergency. Being that many beach-goers are not locals (shoobies), it would not be fair to charge a tax to citizens for a service used in a large portion by outsiders. By paying for a beach tag, you are supporting this public service that is not supported by taxes alone. The tags are only $20 for the season. I think that's a small price to pay for safety and compared to what they could charge.
http://www.ocnj.us/comersus/store/comersus_viewIt
For the record, you may use the beach for free after life guards have left (5PM I believe).
Get ready for it? (Score:2)
Seriously, though-- if every beach in the world is going to be overrun by loud-mouthed douches talking to Bob about the documents for my entire vacation, I'm hiring that guy from the old comic book ads [vpix.com] to come around and deliver some sand-kicking!
Anyone remember "Wild Kingdom"? (Score:3, Funny)
Talk about solving the wrong problem. (Score:2)
You all miss the point (Score:2)
If they can pick up your signal they can track you and find you when you get dragged out to see. This could save hundreds of lives just by giving them a rough area to look in even if they can't pin point the person directly.
How did you guys miss such an obvious thing?
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My solution is a bit different. I'd post a sign saying "beware of undertow" and let natural selection do its job.
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I don't think it can help with tracking swimmers - on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID [wikipedia.org] I find "... passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 cm (4 in.) (ISO 14443) up to a few meters ...".
It would have to be a special tag to allow the usage you envision, and I didn't find that mentioned in the article.
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In the US, we have a constitutional guarantee of access to the ocean - No one can privately own the strip of land between the low and high tide marks or block your access to the same (though in practice, some entities, in particular shipping ports, can do so in the name of "security").
As for the massive expanses of shining white sand above the high tide mark - No such guarantee exists for that; And the actual rights-of-way to get to
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Really? I don't remember that part of the Constitution. Where was that, exactly?
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Curiously, it would seem that such a right does not explicitly exist (in the US constitution), instead occuring only as a matter of common law (from Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois).
Several state constitutions do explicitly spell it out, but not the Big Daddy.
My mistake.
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When I lived in Florida it was mainly to charge some money from out of towners, if you had a local address you could get a free pass, if you left the area of the town(a few miles) you could find beaches that had free access. The benifit from the standpoint of visitors was the paid area had life guards, they were cleaned in the mornings(raking of sand), toilets, changing rooms w/showers and such.
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Those fees go towards cleanup (and other maintenance) and lifeguards.
If you haven't been paying fees to the beach where you are, it's because it's included in the tax you already pay, whether you go to the beach or not. I'd rather pay for my own trips to the beach than pay for everyone's, whether I go or not. (And I don't, generally.)
Madness (Score:2)
I certainly wouldn't want to have to pay to go to the beach, I mean what next, would you have to pay to go the park, or to a national park or walk by a lake or a mountain ? Madness.
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http://www.valdosta.edu/~dlscott/national_parks/fe es.html [valdosta.edu]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dade_Battlefield_Hist oric_State_Park [wikipedia.org] This is a park where I grew up and has charged an entrance fee for as long as I remember.
I think I should be clear that the 'fees' are usually 'parking fees' at the beaches I've been to, and if you walk up, you can avoid the fee. The fees are not just for fixing the parking lot, but all of the beach's needs.
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I expect people who live next to them pay for them with their taxes but then they also benefit from a) living near a nice beach and b) from the trade brought in by people visiting the beach.
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Hmmm, I live in Washington, DC; perhaps we could get the National Park Service to institute tagged entrance to the National Mall so that locals can get a square inch of lawn. I wouldn't mind paying $20 a year if it meant fewer tourists on the Mall.
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Good beach in that area is limited. There is a population of tens of millions a few miles up the road. Even with a fee, it is still incredibly crowded.
The vast majority of beaches in the US are entirely free.
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Because I always carry my cell phone.
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Because you have 60 times the coastline, and 1/10th the population, is the reason you don't have to charge for beach access.
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HUH? I really do not understand
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Trash pickup, lifeguards, etc.
Now imagine your local taxpaying population is outnumbered 100 to 1 in use of this beach. Who should foot the bill for the maintenance? Locals via taxes, or all users via this fee?
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Ever pay a fee to go camping in a National Park?
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Some of the best things about Spanish beaches are the beach parties, plenty of booze, music, drunk people. Excellent.
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A. People in the municipality who don't use the beach don't have to pay for it.
B. People outside of the municipality who use the beach pay for it.