Yet Another Blog

Please tell me I’m not the only one that thinks GreenTeaGirlie is completely retarded… She may be cute, but she is annoying as hell.

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I just spent a good thirty minutes reading comments on the Starbucks Gossip blog, which is a terrible blog mind you. Anyway, the visitors were commenting on a post about how Starbucks is defending charging for internet access. I agree that we should continue to charge for internet access. I know every thing about T-Mobile hotspot service in my store. I know the equipment we use, and I have studied it well, whether T-Mobile wants me near the equipment or not. I can tell you that the service is always up, great customer service, and secure. Many of the commenters were expressing their anger towards Starbucks charging internet. The other Indie coffee shops offer free wifi, so why shouldn’t we? Well, most of the time the wifi is slow, and it is definitely unencrypted. I’ve been to locations with free wifi, and I am disappointed most of the time. Many of my customers are business people. They need fast, secure internet. It needs to be reliable. That is what they are paying for. You can’t get that at free wifi locations. But what about SSH Dynamic Port Forwarding? Yes, I will agree that if you route your traffic through an ssh server, you can surf the internet with your data encrypted and secure. But, you need an ssh server, and I know my customers don’t even know what that is. Once connected through the server, the routing slows the internet down so significatly that it’s really not worth browsing. So, that is out of the question. You don’t need that at a hotspot. Once you log in with your credentials, you are in and set to go. The only way I know of to snoop someone’s traffic through our service is if you spoof the ssid of the hotspot and route the customers to you, which is hard to do seeing as you have to be in the store or very close to the store to do that, and most of the time the partners are monitoring that activity.

Starbucks is a coffee company. We serve coffee, and that will always be our purpose. Our mission statement doesn’t say anything about providing wireless internet as our goal, it’s to establish ourselves as the premier proveyor of the finest coffees in the world, while maintaining our uncompromising principles as we grow.

Also, please stop complaining about having to pay $4.00 for a latte. You are paying for the milk, and the labor to make the drink. Go to any coffee shop, they will charge you the same, if not a few cents less. If you are cheap, enjoy a different coffee shop. I’ll continue this post later about the wifi. Right now, I need sleep.

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That’s all I’m going to say.