October 31, 2006 7:02 AM PST
No Internet at United Nations 'Internet' summit
You'd think that of all places that should have speedy and reliable Internet access, a United Nations summit on the Internet would be high on the list.
Not quite. The organizers of the summit, held at a luxury resort hotel on the Athenian Riveria not far from the city center, couldn't even provide a working Internet connection.
The wireless connection in the main conference hall appeared briefly before dying and leaving attendees bereft of the Net on Monday. Trying to connect to the base station yielded only a "could not connect to the network" error.
It was no better on Tuesday -- by that time, the conference organizers apparently gave up and took the connection offline completely.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan.
