An eccentric tech zillionaire has moved to a small rural NY town and is turning the whole place into a free WiFi zone. The article's great, though inexplicably, the reporter feel sthe need to point out that WiFi is "short for wireless fidelity." Of course, this isn't true (and what's more, even if it was, what would it help you to know that?)
Mr. Gerdes knew that Andesans already had exposure to Wi-Fi: Rosalie Glauser, the owner of the Slow Down Food Company here, has been offering it to customers since 2004. After he plugged a Linksys router and antenna into his Internet-equipped cable jack – provided by the phone company for $54 a month – he had an epiphany.
Soon after, he got a letter from the local library asking for a donation. "I like to give contributions that have an effect," he said. He had another router and antenna (about $100) delivered to the library, suggesting that they be plugged into its broadband connection, thus allowing visitors to piggyback free on its Internet service.
(Thanks, TPB, Esq.!)
Update: 30,000 or so people have written in to quibble over whether WiFi stands for wireless fidelity, pointing to the fact that the WiFi Consortium has decided to claim it does. It doesn't. WiFi is a pun, based on the contraction, "Hi-Fi," which stands for "High fidelity." WiFi "means" wireless fidelity the same way that "foo" and "bar" mean "f*cked up" and "beyond all recognition" — e.g., not at all. WiFi is derived from high fidelity, but if WiFi *means* "wireless fidelity" then it means precisely nothing, because "wireless fidelity" is a nonsense phrase whose only meaning comes from the fact that you get a pun on "HiFi" when you shorten it.
Update 2: Glenn "WiFiNetNews" Fleishman sez, "Simpler: Wi-Fi is a trademark and thus can't mean anything that's not arbitrary
in the realm in which the trademark is coined. Wi-Fi had to have no prior
meaning, so it's de facto meaningless. The trade association wants you to think
something, but I think we've had this discussion before about 'stands for.' I
try to not explain Wi-Fi at all in my writing these days and usually get away
with — I write 'Wi-Fi wireless networking.'"
Update 3 Steve Stroh sez, "I ran this down too with Wi-Fi Alliance way back when, and the answer I got back then is that 'Wireless Fidelity' was created when they started getting barraged by writers whose editors demanded that all acronyms must be spelled out. They caved with the incredibly lame 'Wireless Fidelity'…BTW – WiMAX Forum learned from Wi-Fi Alliance's mistake and were ready when the question was asked – WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. (That's their story, and they're sticking to it.)"
