Saturday, October 31, 2009

The Only ‘Journalism’ Subsidy We Need is in Bandwidth

"If the authors had only pursued their logic, they’d have ended up at the only sensible conclusion — that taxpayers could well subsidize the equivalent of the postal and printing subsidies they celebrate (among many other infrastructure supports that helped get the news from one place to another, such as roads, never mind the variety of other government help that’s gone to news organizations over the past several centuries.

What would following their logic lead us to in a digital world? That’s easy: We should collectively install dark fiber to every home and business where it’s feasible to do so, and put fiber as close to the ones that are too remote to make sense otherwise. It should be “dark fiber” — that is, data lines not controlled by government but available for others to light up to provide services for users."

in reference to: The Only ‘Journalism’ Subsidy We Need is in Bandwidth « Mediactive (view on Google Sidewiki)

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The $10 Phone Bill: The $116 billion business of selling cell phone calls in the U.S. faces a long, ugly decline.

"Commodity--as distasteful as that word might be, there's opportunity there," Linquist says, contemplating the coming apocalypse with a smile. "Our anchor is that as long as we have a substantial cost leadership position we know we're not just a survivor ... we will thrive."

The new gear is so powerful that he will be able to simultaneously increase the quality of cell phone calls while cutting the cost of providing each minute, from just under a penny today to closer to a tenth of a cent. Linquist charges 2.1 cents a minute, just under half of the industry's average revenue. He'll continue cutting, confident his singular focus on running the cheapest voice network will keep his costs well below those of the rest of the industry."

in reference to: The $10 Phone Bill - Forbes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Flu-wary telecommuters may clog Web networks, GAO says

"As the spread of the H1N1 flu keeps more Americans away from work and school, a federal report warns that all those people logging on to the Web from home could overwhelm Internet networks."

Better than clogging hospitals I would have thought.

in reference to: Telecommuters fearing swine flu may clog Web networks, GAO says - washingtonpost.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Rape drug in drinks 'a myth'

"The researchers and related organisations and charities have noted that this belief is supported by very little recorded evidence that drink-spiking with ‘date-rape’ drugs is especially prevalent, although large numbers of those questioned reported to have known people to be victims of drink-spiking, the actual circumstances and real events surrounding these reports are not known. "

in reference to:

"Rape drug in drinks 'a myth'"
- Date-rape drugs like rohypnol are an 'urban myth' according to (view on Google Sidewiki)

Target your filtering, or else...

"Law enforcement groups, which include the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Metropolitan Police's e-crime unit, believe that more encryption will increase the costs and workload for those attempting to monitor internet traffic. One official said: "It will make prosecution harder because it increases the workload significantly."

A source involved in drafting the Bill said that the intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, had also voiced concerns about disconnection. "The spooks hate it," the source said. "They think it is only going to make monitoring more difficult."

Via: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/story.html?id=423

in reference to: UK Law Enforcement Tells UK Gov't: Please Don't Kick File Sharers Offline | Techdirt (view on Google Sidewiki)

Conroy blunder could damage Telstra

"Detailed appendix information about providing broadband services to commercially unviable areas would allow critics to test Telstra's public claims with the reality."

And that's a bad thing?

in reference to: Stephen Conroy | Blunder could damage Telstra (view on Google Sidewiki)

Monday, October 26, 2009

Chris Dyhrberg - GM Product Management, Chorus

"A question from the audience on why it was necessary to demand a return on the $1.5 billion FttP network when each year, we pour some $2 billion into roading with no such expectations, was given short shrift by Dyhrberg. “It’s rubbish. Broadband networks are not like roads,” Chris Dyhrberg stated categorically."

in reference to: Computerworld > Is fibre the answer? 'Yebbut', says telco panel (view on Google Sidewiki)

Eric von Hippel

“Twitter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them,’ ” said Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. and author of the book “Democratizing Innovation.”

in reference to:

"witter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them,’ ” said Eric von Hippel"
- Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Windows 7 – It’s Vista All Over Again

"Because the more I play with Windows 7, the more I see the Vista debacle unfolding all over again. The commonly accepted wisdom is that Windows 7 is oh-so-much-better than Vista. Well, based on my own extensive testing, it’s not. Not at all."

Via: Twit 217

in reference to: Windows 7 – It’s Vista All Over Again : Jim Louderback (view on Google Sidewiki)

Why Banks Stay Big

"The trouble is that the “market” for banking is so distorted—by switching costs, by government subsidies and guarantees, and by the banks’ market power—that it’s hard to know whether big banks are adding value or are simply exploiting their oligopolistic positions. We do know that too much concentration in finance increases risk, since a handful of dominant players are more likely to make the same kinds of mistakes, and jeopardize the entire system."

in reference to: Why banks stay big : The New Yorker (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Nobody Knows Nothing

"But it's all fraud, papered with self-delusion, self-aggrandization and hubris. What gets done in large organizations (corporations, non-profits, governments) is the sum of what everyone in those organizations does. The people at the top generally have no more real impact, and no more useful knowledge with which to make decisions, than the people at the bottom. The 'leaders' are responsible neither for the organization's successes, nor its failures -- a few people just don't make that much difference, except when they make some hugely expensive, incompetent decision or rip the company off so it goes bankrupt. "

Via: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/10/25/have-a-nice-daze/

in reference to: How to Save the World (view on Google Sidewiki)

Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview

"Libertarian municipalism is not one of many pluralistic techniques that is intended to achieve a vague and undefined social goal. Democratic to its core and nonhierarchical in its structure, it is a kind of human destiny, not merely one of an assortment of political tools or strategies that can be adopted and discarded with the aim of achieving power."

VIa: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.helix

in reference to: Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview | Institute for Social Ecology (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Internationale and Copyright

"Pierre De Geyter died in 1932. His music of the Internationale is copyrighted in France until October 2017. The duration of copyright in France is 70 years following the end of the year when the author died, plus (for musical works) 6 years and 152 days to compensate for World War I, and 8 years and 120 days to compensate for World War II respectively.[6] In 2005, Le Chant du Monde, the corporation administering the authors' rights, asked Pierre Merejkowsky, the film director and an actor of Insurrection / résurrection, to pay €1,000 for whistling the song for seven seconds."

Pay the living, not the dead.

in reference to: The Internationale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (view on Google Sidewiki)

Family's shock at council spying

"This is a ridiculously disproportionate use of RIPA and will undermine public trust in necessary and lawful surveillance."

Which, fortunately, is the way of excess, be it censorship, copyright or other power. Abuse it and lose it.

in reference to: BBC NEWS | UK | England | Dorset | Family's shock at council spying (view on Google Sidewiki)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

UK example of what NZ Search & Surveillance Bill might presage?

"Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).

It turned out that Ms. Paton had broken no rules. Her daughter was admitted to the school. But she has not let the matter rest."

in reference to: Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, October 23, 2009

Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google

"Sean Parker gave a provocative presentation entitled “The New Era Of The Network Service.” In it, he argues that so-called “network services” like Facebook (which he helped start) and Twitter will soon dominate the web, rather than “information services” like Google and Yahoo."

Certainly explains Google's eagerness for [social] network services. NB. Reed's Law.

in reference to: Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation (Full Slide Deck) (view on Google Sidewiki)

ACTA - Control not copying

"Kim Hill spent a portion of her Saturday Morning radio programme discussing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with Mark Harris (who blogs On the Gripping Hand which I love as a blog name). The conversation covered the normal range of issues (unfortunately mixing copyright with patent law freely), most of which I agree with, but I think they both missed the key risk of ACTA."

in reference to:

- Stephen's Blog - ACTA (view on Google Sidewiki)