isen.blog

Quote of Note: Debby Cwalina

2009-06-25T20:54:00.001-04:00

"They think copyright means 'mean people'."

Debbie Cwalina, Girl Scout, explaining how Girl Scouts see ASCAP, since the Scouts can't afford to license ASCAP songs at summer camp.

UPDATE: <blush> A comment by Bob, below, points out that this story is datelined 1996. I missed this little fact completely. Wonder how the Girl Scouts and ASCAP are getting along these days. </blush>

[source] [h/t Hamish MacEwan]

Technorati Tags: Copyright, QuoteOfNote

Genachowski & Strickling Confirmed by Senate!

2009-06-25T20:39:00.001-04:00

The two most powerful telecom officials in the land, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski and NTIA Head Larry Strickling, were approved today on the Senate floor. It's been a long time since January 20. I know that both men have a lot of shoveling before they (metaphorically) find their desks, but finally the shoveling can begin!

Technorati Tags: FCC, JuliusGenachowski, NTIA, LarryStrickling

Talking Net Politics in Silicon Valley

2009-06-23T21:05:00.001-04:00

At EComm 2009, in Silicon Valley, at least one speaker from Washington DC failed utterly to understand the techno-libertarian Bay Area mindset. This person, a friend, was all Obama-Genichowski-Net-Neutrality-Democrats as if the audience were a bunch of liberal beltway thinktank staffers who, incidentally, happened to know how to wire breadboards and write code. The talk got resistance, pushback and hostile questions from the audience. The response to that pushback was ineffective, perhaps even damaging to open Internet initiatives.

When policy people go to Silicon Valley, they need to explain why politics is relevant to Silicon Valley jobs and companies. I just re-stumbled across a clip of my own talk from the previous EComm. I didn't make that mistake; the talk got across. Here's a substantial clip from it:

Technorati Tags: FCC, LeeDryburgh, NetworkNeutrality, Politics, EComm

Personal Democracy Forum is next week

2009-06-23T11:34:00.001-04:00

I'm looking forward to Personal Democracy Forum, June 29 and 30, in New York. PDF producers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry do an amazing job of bringing the smartest, most relevant speakers to PDF's amazing Time Warner Center venue for a two day political brain-feast. The PDF motto, "technology is changing politics," is truer today than ever before; if you doubt it, simply look at how the aftermath of the Iran election is playing on Twitter.

I'm especially looking forward to hearing from White House CIO Vivek Kundra, VRML inventor and visionary Mark Pesce, and must-read NYT Columnist Frank Rich, and also, if it is anything like last year's PDF, to the several surprises that are bound to occur.

See you there!

Technorati Tags: AndrewRasiej, PDF2009, Politics, MicahSifry

Questions about WSJ story on Net Management in Iran

2009-06-22T12:25:00.001-04:00

The main source for a story in the Wall Street Journal today about Internet monitoring and spying in Iran denies he provided key evidence for the story's main claim. In addition, one of the story's co-reporters has a history of writing stories that his sources disavow.

The WSJ story, headlined Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology, says

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

The "monitoring center," installed within the government's telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, Mr. Roome said.

Now Roome is all over Twitter denying that he said what the WSJ reports. He points to his blog, which says,

Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran.

He says Nokia Siemens only provides

Lawful Intercept . . . with the capability to conduct voice monitoring of local calls on its fixed and mobile network.

Chris Rhoads, the reporter who co-wrote today's story, also co-wrote a story that painted what I said to support something I didn't mean. Two other sources for that story, Larry Lessig and Rick Whitt, also felt the same way! So even though the claim that the Iranian government is using the Internet for spying and censorship is consistent with my beliefs, I have to take spokesman Roome's claim, that Rhoads' reporting goes beyond what he said, seriously! [Here's that WSJ Story and my blog post on that story.]

Today's WSJ story raises a second question. First it quotes Roome saying,

"If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them."

But then the story reports (and Roome confirms) that Nokia Siemens

exited the business that included the monitoring equipment, what it called "intelligence solutions," at the end of March, by selling it to Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, a Munich-based investment firm, Mr. Roome said. He said the company determined it was no longer part of its core business.

So are "intelligence solutions" intrinsic to networks or not?

I would like to think that Iran's government is raising a danger flag about using deep packet inspection and other forms of Internet monitoring for anti-democratic political suppression. But if you strip away the claims attributed to Roome, which he denies, you're left with one anonymous Iranian engineer saying,

We didn't know they could do this much . . . Now we know they have powerful things that allow them to do very complex tracking on the network.

and Bradley Anstis, director of technical strategy with Marshal8e6 Inc., an Internet security company in Orange, California, saying (according to the article) that, [Anstis] "and other experts interviewed have examined Internet traffic flows in and out of Iran that show characteristics of content inspection, among other measures." The article quotes Anstis directly making general claims like

[Iran is] now drilling into what the population is trying to say,

and

This looks like a step beyond what any other country is doing, including China.

But how would we know? The main source has denied that he said what the story reported, the other two experts are generality-rich and specifics-poor, and one co-reporter has a history of writing stories that his sources disavow.

We can see evidence that Iran is involved in wholesale Internet shutdowns. But where is the evidence that it is doing spying via packet (or header) inspection? My mind is more than open, it is *ready* to see it. Nevertheless, today's WSJ story isn't anything more than suggestive; it certainly doesn't stand on its own.

Technorati Tags: Censorship, DeepPacketInspection, Iran, IranElection, NetworkManagement, NetworkNeutrality, Press, Wiretap, WSJ

Iranian "Network Management"

2009-06-19T15:13:00.001-04:00

Technorati Tags: NetworkNeutrality

DOD: Free Speech is Terrorism

2009-06-19T08:14:00.001-04:00

From Department of Defense Antiterrorism and Force Protection Annual Refresher Training Course (for all personnel):

Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?
Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer.
O Attacking the Pentagon
O IEDs
O Hate crimes against racial groups
O Protests

***

The "correct" answer is Protests.

[source]

Technorati Tags: FirstAmendment, War

Verizon blow out

2009-06-17T12:36:00.001-04:00

When I went to check my mail this morning, a Verizon truck was parked in front of my house. It was leaking hydraulic fluid, and three of the four Verizon employees with it were looking as the fourth spread absorbent pads. I asked one of the lookers what happened. He said, "We've been asking for a new f^&%ing truck for years."

Four hours later there are three Verizon vehicles, three fire trucks, a police car, two Environmental Clean-up Services of Vermont vehicles, and a crew of dozens. One guy is vacuuming up kitty litter soaked in hydraulic fluid. Two cops are directing traffic.

You'd think a capex-heavy company like Verizon would replace its fleet once in a while! Or at least do the preventative maintenance.

I shudder to think what this is costing. My guess is that this morning's mess is worth about half a Verizon truck. Maybe Verizon won't pay for the fire trucks and police cars and firemen and police men and women . . . but I, most assuredly, will.

Technorati Tags: Capex, Prevention, Stupidity, Verizon

Twee2Blog: Iran Election News

2009-06-17T11:36:00.001-04:00

@Katrinskaya writes:

Rumours (and photos) of actual real, filled-in, stamped ballots found dumped out of Tehran in thousands. #iranelection #gr88 (RT @lotfan)

and:

RT @LilyMazahery I'm getting reports that telephone communications in various parts of Tehran have now been cut off too.

and:

Guardian on today's rallies: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/17/iran-uprising #gr88 #iranelection

[update] and:

Blogs w/ good/great updates: @dailydish- http://bit.ly/HpSSc, Guardian http://bit.ly/sPKgJ, Nico Pitney, Huffpost http://bit.ly/3x210o #gr88

Clearly the best source of news on the Iran Election Fiasco is Twitter, thanks to diligent aggregators like @Katrinskaya

Technorati Tags: Elections, KatrinVerclas, Press, Twee2blog, Twitter, Voting

Wired for War

2009-06-12T11:10:00.001-04:00

The other David Isenberg (the military analyst, currently at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo) has written a good review of a scary piece of non-fiction. The book is _Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century_ by Peter Singer.

Remote-controlled and autonomous vehicles are already playing major roles. Today there are 22 different kinds of ground systems in use in Iraq alone, not to mention airborne drones like the Predator, which is responsible for controversial attacks in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, and,

"it's bigger brother, Global Hawk, which can stay in the [air] for up to 35 hours and reach an altitude of 65,000 feet."

How about,

". . . the Spartan Scout, a 30 foot robotic speedboat, packing a .50-caliber machine gun."

Those are deployed today. Tomorrow is even scarier. Isenberg writes,

So what happens when other countries which are even more advanced in electronics and robotics, like Japan, start investing in military robotics?

As Singer notes the US is not the only player in this. And, as an early adopter, the US may well be surpassed by other countries which piggyback off US developments.

[Countries? What about small groups hacking roombas, quad-copters, etc.? We gonna outlaw model airplanes? -- DSI]

Because so much of robotic development is based on open source information [download source code for one project here -- DSI] their increased use may well hasten the global redistribution of power; not exactly the result that those hoping the use of military robots will allow continued US military hegemony.

And how does the US military field enough scientifically and technologically adept personnel, when it has trouble attracting sufficient high school graduates, which was the case until the recent recession eased its recruiting problems.

He says that author Singer believes that Murphy's Law,

"Anything that can go wrong, will - at the worst possible moment,"

also applies to robots.

In other words,

. . . to quote the tag line from one sci-fi movie classic (The Fly, 1986) . . . "Be afraid . . . Be very afraid."

But, Isenberg says we must face what we fear if we are to deal with it. He quotes Singer:

"We embrace war but don't like to look to its future, including now one of the most fundamental changes ever in war."

Technorati Tags: Robotics, War

It's Official: Value Moving to Edge

2009-06-12T08:41:00.001-04:00

It's official. A team of market analysts from Oppenheimer are saying (.pdf) what I've been saying since 1997, that the apps are separating from the network, and this is driving a wave of "explosive innovation." The team, which includes my friend Tim Horan, says

". . . the latest smartphones (Pre, Bold, iPhone) show that wireless applications can be separated from the underlying network. Indeed, apps must be provided separately to allow the explosive innovation required to grow as well as take advantage of global economies of scale. Applications and hardware are global, with future expense elasticity being driven primarily by their adoption in markets such as China and India, rather than the U.S. This could potentially cannibalize voice and text messaging with applications for which the service providers receive little revenues (e.g., instant messaging, Skype, Fring, Truphone and Nimbuzz are all VoIP applications now available wirelessly). The obvious conflict this creates between the service providers and the application/hardware providers will be the most important dynamic the industry will face.

The carriers need to face the fact that just because something is unthinkable doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Today mobile phones. Tomorrow cable TV.

The Oppenheimer team thinks the winners will be backhaul providers, towercos and data centers -- in other words, infrastructure providers. The losers; anybody that depends on integration of infrastructure and app.

I had it right in 1997, but my timing was off. If you believe the Oppenheimer team, the time for wireless dis-integration is now.

Technorati Tags: ClayShirky, Infrastructure, TimHoran, Stupid Network, WirelessNetworks

No wonder the big studios are scared . . .

2009-06-10T15:07:00.001-04:00

From Is the Tipping Point Toast? (p.4) by Clive Thompson, in Fast Company:

Working with two colleagues, [Duncan] Watts designed an online music-downloading service. They filled it with 48 songs by new, unknown, and unsigned bands. Then they recruited roughly 14,000 people to log in. Some were asked to rank the songs based on their own personal preference, without regard to what other people thought. They were picking songs purely on each song's merit. But the other participants were put into eight groups that had "social influence": Each could see how other members of the group were ranking the songs.

Watts predicted that word of mouth would take over. And sure enough, that's what happened. In the merit group, the songs were ranked mostly equitably, with a small handful of songs drifting slightly lower or higher in popularity. But in the social worlds, as participants reacted to one another's opinions, huge waves took shape. A small, elite bunch of songs became enormously popular, rising above the pack, while another cluster fell into relative obscurity.

Hat tip to @kevinmarks

Technorati Tags: Hollywood, intellectualproperty, Twee2blog

New Scientist Mis-Lede

2009-06-10T10:06:00.001-04:00

An article in New Scientist has a misleading title and lede. The headline says, " Train can be worse for climate than plane."

The article's lede continues the deception, saying,

True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false.

The whole premise is false. Nobody ever takes a six mile trip on a jumbo jet. It's as meaningless as saying the average human has one testicle.

The New Scientist article is attempting to report an academic study by Mikhail V. Chester and Arpad Horvath, entitled, "Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains," Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (2009) [link.pdf]. It's a pretty good attempt to look at more than just fuel use in determining how various means of transportation use energy and pollute.

The study compares the per-person-kilometer energy footprints of busses that are full with busses that are empty, but it fails to compare full and empty airplanes. It breaks out airplanes by size but not by another, more important variable, short-haul versus long haul trip. It fails to even attempt to account for the trips that *never would occur* if there were no airplanes, or if they were slower, etc. And it fails to relate that every plane trip begins and ends with a car, bus or train trip to and from the airport.

The study, and the New Scientist mis-reporting of it, it impels this rant against the apparently irresistible urge to conclude more -- and different -- than the data indicate.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Environment, Global, GlobalClimateDisruption, Press, Rant, Science, statistics, Sustainability, Travel

They're not gonna drive my roads for free!

2009-06-09T15:19:00.001-04:00

Ed Whitacre tapped for GM Chair.

UPDATE: Alex Goldman on Ed W at GM [link].

Technorati Tags: irony

Oy, oy oy! The FCC Web site . . .

2009-06-09T12:09:00.001-04:00

The FCC Web site is a mucking fess. It's a wonder that ANYBODY can find -- or do --ANYTHING! Here's hoping the Obama Administration's transparency initiatives include a complete tear-it-out-to-the-studs re-do of our communications commission's communication platform.

I needed to call the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) Help Desk to figure out how to file the Its the Internet Stupid Comment. Fortunately, I figured out I needed to call the ECFS Help Desk before it closes at 4:30 East Coast Time. Then I needed a tutorial from a friend to figure out how to download and view the 495 comments filed to date.

If you want to view the comments filed so far, just go to this easy-to-remember URL: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/websql/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.hts?ws_mode=retrieve_list&id_proceeding=09-51

Go to the bottom of the page and click on Enter New Search Criteria. Do this even if you don't have any old search criteria.

On the Search for Filed Comments page that comes up, enter the docket number. In the case of FCC GN Docket No. 09-51 you enter only this: 09-51. You've just gotta know this.

Then, if you're looking for our comment, you may enter David S. or you may enter Isenberg under "Filed on behalf of." But if you enter David Isenberg, it will return Zero Documents.

Want to find it based on key words, or a text string search? Heh. How does it feel to want, sucka? It's so 1998.

Now try to download it. Just click on the blue-fonted hyperlinked word COMMENT, and open the downloaded document, right? WRONG.

What gets downloaded is a file named -- in every case -- retrieve.cgi. Doesn't matter if it's filed by Free Press, Brett Glass or AT&T; everybody's comment is named retrieve.cgi. If you want to download ten in a row, you're S-out-of-luck. You've got to rename each file, one at a time, to have a meaningful name and a .pdf extension. With a .pdf extension, you can click-to-open the comment in Acrobat, Preview or some other .pdf reader.

Welcome to the "public" comment system at the FCC! No wonder telecom policy is an inside game around here.

Technorati Tags: FCC, ItsTheInternetStupid, Open, Organizational Culture

Tucows CEO tells why It's the Internet Stupid

2009-06-09T07:35:00.001-04:00

Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss explains the "It's the Internet Stupid" initiative to focus the upcoming National Broadband Plan on “faster, more affordable, more ubiquitous, more reliable connections to the Internet.”

As a signatory to the initiative, Noss believes it’s essential not to confuse “broadband” with access to the Internet. It needs to be spelled out explicitly to make sure that the plan meets the needs of ordinary citizens.

[link to source, a tucows news item]

Technorati Tags: BB4US.net, Broadband, ElliotNoss, Internet, ItsTheInternetStupid, National Broadband Plan, USBroadbandCoalition

It's the Internet Stupid: The Press Release

2009-06-08T18:43:00.002-04:00

isen.com, LLC: Internet Experts Tell FCC: It's the Internet Stupid!
FCC's National Broadband Plan Should Put Internet First

FOR: ISEN.COM, LLC

JUN 8, 2009 - 18:02 ET

COS COB, CT--(Marketwire - June 8, 2009) - A group of 41 computer scientists, network engineers, Internet business owners, legal scholars, best-selling authors and other Internet experts are telling the FCC to put the Internet at the center of its National Broadband Plan. "This is our country's big chance to make up lost ground," said spokesperson David Isenberg, Principal Prosultant(SM) of isen.com, LLC, "but a faster connection won't matter if we're not connecting to a free and open Internet." In essence, the experts are telling the FCC, "It's the Internet, Stupid." They've published their statement at http://ItsTheInternetStupid.com/.

The group points out that most of the benefits that Congress wants the National Broadband Plan to deliver -- such as job creation, civic participation, energy efficiency and health care delivery -- come from one specific use of broadband connectivity: accessing the Internet. (Broadband is also used in cable TV, cell phone and corporate networks.) The group is concerned that a focus on broadband that does not emphasize Internet connections could lead to an infrastructure that does not yield the very benefits the Broadband Plan aims to deliver.

The group includes Vint Cerf, who, with Bob Kahn, designed the TCP and IP protocols in 1973. It also includes David P. Reed, a co-inventor of one of the Internet's most important principles, Steve Crocker, who designed the process that improves and expands the definition of the Internet, and Scott Bradner, a lifelong leader of the Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force and other Internet technical groups. It also includes Mitch Kapor and John Perry Barlow, who founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Robin Chase, who was recently named by Time Magazine as one of 100 most influential people of 2009, and Lawrence Lessig, a leader in Internet law and culture.

The group includes Michael R. Nelson, who worked as lead Senate staffer on the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, which helped transform the Internet from an academic experiment to the useful utility it is today. It includes Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Media, producer of many widely-respected technical books and conferences. It includes authors of formative books about the Internet such as Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Jeff Jarvis, insider newsletter publishers Dave Burstein and Gordon Cook, and some two dozen other Internet experts of many stripes. The group was organized over the weekend by David S. Isenberg, Robin Chase and David Weinberger to address concerns about fundamental assumptions of the FCC's first document on a National Broadband Plan.

"The telephone and cable companies, who are saying 'broadband, broadband, broadband,' have money, power, lobbyists and a cash-cow business that is threatened by the Internet," says Isenberg. "The best way to get our message out is by organizing a large group of distinguished Internet experts."

The FCC was directed to produce a National Broadband Plan as a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The ARRA tells the FCC to deliver a National Broadband Plan to Congress by February 17, 2010. The "It's the Internet, Stupid," experts and over 50 other signers are submitting their statement to the FCC in a first round of public comments that ends today.

About David S. Isenberg: Isenberg was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories until he quit in 1998 to found isen.com, LLC, a decidedly independent telecom analysis firm. He blogs at isen.com/blog and produces F2C: Freedom to Connect, a technology policy conference held in Washington, DC, every March.

About Robin Chase: Chase is currently CEO of GoLoco, a ride-sharing and social network, is also founder and former CEO of ZipCar, the world's most successful car-sharing network. Chase was named as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2009. She was an invited speaker at the prestigious TED conference in 2008.

About David Weinberger: Weinberger is co-author of the best-selling "Cluetrain Manifesto" and author of two other books that are seminal Internet works, "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," and "Everything is Miscellaneous." He is a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

About isen.com, LLC: isen.com, LLC is an independent telecom analysis firm based in Cos Cob, CT.

Prosultant is a service mark of isen.com, LLC

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact David S. Isenberg 203-661-4798 Email Contact isen@isen.com

Technorati Tags: AaronSwartz, AndrewRasiej, ARRA, ARRA Stimulus Act, BB4US.net, Broadband, Content-Conduit, DavidBurstein, DavidPReed, DavidWeinberger, Democracy, DocSearls, EFF, FCC, GordonCook, GreatDepression2.0, HaroldFeld, Infrastructure, Innovation, Internet, ItsTheInternetStupid, LawrenceLessig, NetworkNeutrality, ParadoxoftheBestNetwork, PublicGoods, NationalBroadbandPlan, RobinChase, savetheinternet, ScottBradner, USBroadbandCoalition, VintCerf

It's the Internet Stupid

2009-06-07T16:38:00.001-04:00

Comments are due tomorrow on the FCC's Notice of Inquiry [PDF document with full FCC Notice here] on a National Broadband Plan, which was mandated by Congress as part of the Recovery Act of 2009.

This proceeding is likely be at least as important to U.S. telecommunications policy as the Telecom Act of 1996 was. It could be more powerful if we do it right.

We think the broadband connections that count are connections to the Internet! If we put "broadband" first, we risk twisting and diminishing the Internet to fit somebody's political definition of broadband. But if we put the Internet first, then it's far more likely that broadband will be defined and implemented to serve the Internet we know and love.

In other words, Broadband, schmaudband, fraudband! It's the Internet, stupid.

Please join John Perry Barlow, Scott Bradner, Dave Burstein, Robin Chase, Judi Clark, Gordon Cook, Steve Crocker, Susan Estrada, Harold Feld, Tom Freeburg, Dewayne Hendricks, Jeff Jarvis, Mitch Kapor, Larry Lessig, Sascha Meinrath, Jerry Michalski, Elliott Noss, Leslie Nulty, Tim Nulty, Tim O’Reilly, Andrew Rasiej, David P. Reed, Howard Rheingold, Roy Russell, Doc Searls, Micah L. Sifry, Dana Spiegel, Aaron Swartz, Katrin Verclas, David Weinberger, Stanton Williams, Brian Worobey, Esme Vos Yu and me by signing our comment at ItsTheInternetStupid.com.

Technorati Tags: AaronSwartz, AndrewRasiej, ARRA, ARRA Stimulus Act, BB4US.net, Broadband, Content-Conduit, DavidBurstein, DavidPReed, DavidWeinberger, Democracy, DocSearls, EFF, FCC, GordonCook, GreatDepression2.0, HaroldFeld, Infrastructure, Innovation, Internet, ItsTheInternetStupid, LawrenceLessig, NationalBroadbandPlan, NetworkNeutrality, ParadoxoftheBestNetwork, PublicGoods, RobinChase, savetheinternet, ScottBradner, USBroadbandCoalition

20% of Harvard MBAs pledge for greater good.

2009-06-01T06:11:00.001-04:00

NYT [link]:

Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.

The oath says, in part:

As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term.

Two questions:

1) What's wrong with the other 80%?
2) Student led, where's the teachers?

Technorati Tags: Corruption, PublicGoods

Quote of Note: Brett Glass

2009-05-31T06:18:00.001-04:00

"All that is necessary is to ban anticompetitive practices and incent or require the existing fiber owners to open their networks to the areas through which their fiber passes. (This should have been a condition of granting them use of the public right of way, but at the time no one imagined that they wouldn't do the obvious thing and seize the opportunity to serve those areas.)"

Brett Glass, in a CircleID comment on my Crawford likes Aussie utility network blog posting. Good idea Brett, but probably not quite all that is necessary.

Technorati Tags: Competition, fiberoptics, PublicGoods, CommonCarriage, QuoteOfNote, Unbundling, USLosingLead, Utility

Homeless but Wired

2009-05-30T05:58:00.001-04:00

From The Homeless Stay Wired, by Phred Dvorak, WSJ, 5/30/09

Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.

"You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper," says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. "But you need the Internet."

*snip*

Aspiring computer programmer Paul Weston, 29, says his Macintosh PowerBook has been a "lifeboat" since he was laid off from his job as a hotel clerk in December and moved to a shelter. Sitting in a Whole Foods store with free wireless access, Mr. Weston searches for work and writes a computer program he hopes to sell eventually. He has emailed city officials to press for better shelter conditions.

*snip*

Robert Livingston, 49, has carried his Asus netbook everywhere since losing his apartment in December. A meticulous man who spends some of his $59 monthly welfare check on haircuts, Mr. Livingston says he quit a security-guard job late last year, then couldn't find another when the economy tanked.

*snip*

For Skip Schreiber, 64, an amateur philosopher with wispy white hair who lives in a van, power is the biggest challenge to staying wired. Mr. Schreiber tended heating and ventilation systems before work-related stress and depression sidelined him around 15 years ago, he says. For his 60th birthday, he dipped into his monthly disability check to buy a laptop, connected it to his car battery, and taught himself to use it. "I liked the concept of the Internet," says Mr. Schreiber, "this unlimited source of opinion and thought."

*snip*

Michael Ross creates his own electricity, with a gas generator perched outside his yellow-and-blue tent. For a year, Mr. Ross has stood guard at a parking lot for construction equipment, under a deal with the owner. Mr. Ross figures he has been homeless for about 15 years, surviving on his Army pension. Inside the tent, the taciturn 50-year-old has an HP laptop with a 17-inch screen and 320 gigabytes of data storage, as well as four extra hard drives that can hold another 1,000 gigabytes . . .

*snip*

Technorati Tags: Economics, GreatDepression2.0, Internet, Poverty

Still missing my cat

2009-05-29T20:14:00.003-04:00

Technorati Tags: RIP

As it should be -- open and free!

2009-05-29T15:25:00.001-04:00

President Obama made a remarkably strong re-affirmation of network neutrality today, saying,

“Let me also be clear about what we will not do . . . Our pursuit of cyber security will not -- I repeat, will not include -- monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to Net Neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be -- open and free.”

[source] via Tim Karr in Free Press Blog [link].

Excellent. But when do we get proof positive that the optical splitter in Room 641A at AT&T's Folsom Street facility and the Quantico Circuit at Verizon Wireless in northern Virginia -- and the other domestic spying facilities that we haven't discovered yet -- have been taken off line? [ref]

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, Constitution, NetworkNeutrality, Privacy, QuoteOfNote, Wiretap

Clarifying "Crawford Likes Aussie Network"

2009-05-29T07:16:00.001-04:00

Dennis Fazio has posted a comment over at CircleID, which reprinted my blog post entitled Crawford likes Aussie utility network, taking me to task for saying that an Aussie-style network would cost way less than the $500 billion we get when we naively multiply the cost of that network by the difference factor of the two national populations. He is right for flagging this prone-to-misinterpretation number.

Fazio bases his alternate estimate on Verizon's cost per house passed of $800 per house times 111 million households in the U.S. That's $88.8 billion. Since that doesn't include the cost of hooking up a house or the new gear in the central office, I say it is low. It probably doesn't include passing homes in Vermont or Maine or other hard-to-recable states, which Verizon has been dumping left and right.

In another blog post not too long ago, I tried to pencil out the cost of fiber a bit more carefully and came up with $290 billion. Is that right? Who knows. But $500 B is clearly way high and $88.8 B is clearly way low.

Technorati Tags: fiberoptics, FTTH, OpenAccess

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Clarifying "Crawford Likes Aussie Network"