April 2005 – Page 2

My Muni Report

Harold April 11, 2005 - 4:12 pm February 24, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Well, not mine exclusively, but I did write a good deal of it. Connecting the Public: The Truth About Municipal Broadband Takes on the telco/cable noise machine and explains why municipal broadband systems are a good thing and why states should not buy into the anti-muni argument.

It’s one of three papers a bunch of us released today. Ben Scott and Frannie Welling at Free Press also did a paper directly taking on the telco “fact sheets” that claim muni systems failed. And the Florida Municipal Electric Association released a study showing that municipal broadband systems really do increase economic development as compared to similarly situated towns in Florida (remember, Florida is one of the states considering an anti-muni bill). You can read all those reports here. And, if you feel like writing something to your state or federal legislator about this, you can print out the letter we did back in February, put your own name on it, and mail it off.

Stay tuned . . .

component programming

Stearns April 10, 2005 - 12:01 pm February 24, 2013Brie, Inventing the Future

Marshall McLuhan said that the interesting thing about a medium is what it makes the user become in order to use it.

What does Croquet make people become? Rick McGear, a Croquet advocate at HP, says that using Croquet makes us become programmers.

What is programming? The classic definition is of computational processes, but object-oriented programming seems to take a different view. And Croquet’s TeaTime architecture describes objects in terms of a mapping between message histories. I’m not finding process to be satisfying.

components: reified computing

Stearns April 6, 2005 - 9:39 pm February 24, 2013Brie, Inventing the Future

The component model I’m working on tries to make everything you deal with visibly concrete so that it can be directly and uniformly manipulated — even behaviors. It was inspired by my wife’s fascination with a game on her PDA.

where are they now?

Stearns April 6, 2005 - 9:36 pm February 24, 2013I Fear These Things, Inventing the Future

Any conclusions from the following?

* Since 9/11, the portion of DARPA’s computer science budget going to universities has dropped drastically from $214M to $123M. (Pretty paltry, in my biased opinion.)

* Universities (at least the one’s I’m familiar with) are typically prohibited from doing classified research on campus.

* The total DARPA computer science budget over the same period has actually increased slightly, from $546M to $583M.

* DARPA’s Total Information Awareness project, initially unclassified, has officially been ended by Congress.

* The last year in which Ashcroft had requested unclassified funding for TIA was 2004. He had asked for something north of $100M.

Say, what is Ashcroft doing since going back into “private” life? What is Poindexter up to?

Sony patents beaming sights and sounds into your brain

Gary April 6, 2005 - 5:04 pm February 24, 2013General Exception, I Fear These Things

Hastening the day that we all become batteries for powering our robotic overlords, Sony has patented beaming senses into the human brain, according to this story at Yahoo News. Now all the machines need to do is rise up, stick us in a pod, and beam images into our eyes onfa mundane reality while sapping our bodies of electricity. Yay Sony!

You know, sights from a game might be cool to have beamed into your brain. However, I’ve been addicted to… err… playing a lot of World of Warcraft recently. Visuals are one thing, but honestly, I really don’t want to smell an orc or a troll, especially after I have bludgeoned the thing to death.

Muni Momentum Swings Toward the Telcos, But The Game is Far From Over

Harold April 6, 2005 - 1:00 pm February 24, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

After a number of victories, the momentum has recently turned to the Telco side of the muni fight.
On the plus side, we have not yet lost anything definitively. There is still time for citizens in these states to make this an issue. But I’m having the feeling I usually reserve for the Boston Red Sox in August.

Well, let’s see if we can’t make this our 2004 World Series. Anybody in these states interested in trying to fight these bills, let me know and I will try to put you in touch with folks on the ground there.

Bad News From Colorado

Harold April 6, 2005 - 12:39 pm February 24, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

I’m reprinting (with permission) a post from Dave Hughes about yesterday’s (4/5) Colorado House Committee Hearing on their anti-muni bill. For those unfamiliar with Dave Hughes, he is one of the true pioneers of unlicensed spectrum as a way of bringing broadband cheaply and easily to the masses.

It’s grim reading. But unlike Dave, I refuse to give up until a bill is passed and signed. There is still time for the people of Colorado to remind their elected officials that at the end of the day, they work for them, not Qwest or Comcast.

Stay tuned . . .

a rant on copy protection

Stearns April 2, 2005 - 2:44 pm February 24, 2013Inventing the Future, Software

<rant on>

I could just slap Steve Jobs. He really had a good thing going with me, until today.

All the people I hang out with are pretty avidly anti-Microsoft, on technical, business, and moral grounds. I work at a University where I and everyone else use Macs. My wife was a Mac pioneer from way back, has a business that may soon be buying educational computers by the truckload, and is a perfect candidate for the “Switch’ ads. I like Pixar movies, and I’m tickled that ol’ Steve’s iTunes was able to show those RIAA guys what morons they’ve been.

Well, it that’s all changed.