Year: 2006

NIMBY Indeed

Our neighborhood has small lots, plenty of common greenspace, energy-efficient homes, nature trails, no overhead wires, and multiple kids in very nearly every single home. Last summer, we received a letter asking whether we would prefer a new high voltage power line to be located alongside the left of our neighborhood or by the arboretum in the middle.

We started going to “community input” meetings in the fall, and the more we found out, the more we were enraged. My wife Robin put together a grass-roots organization, WireSafeWisconin, and now this short video. (The speakers in the video are a former electric industry executive and a state assistant attorney general. The non-industrialized landscape pictures are of our neighborhood.)

We’ve been getting traction on local TV, radio, and newspapers, but these guys are pretty well armed. Time to break out the nuclear weapons. Below the fold is a letter to the editor tying the evil transmission company to the Wisconsin state influence scandal that has already brought down several leading state politicians (including state senate majority leader Chuck Chvala). With this escalation, Robin and I are beginning to feel like the protagonists in Cory Doctrow‘s Nimby and the D-Hoppers.

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Satellite Radio Has Good Political Sense, NOT

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Normally I like XM and Sirius just fine. But this rather sad attempt to claim they complied with the terms of their license by designing interoperable radios, but not producing them, makes me laugh.

Normally, I wouldn’t care (much) if XM and Sirius want to go all anticompetitive against each other or if the FCC lets them. But with a Senate bill pending to cut off satellite radio’s traffic and weather service, I’m not sure I’d pick this moment to look like I’m flouting the law. But hey, what do I know?

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This week's Candorville a MUST READ

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Candorville started in the Washington Post last year, and it is an amazingly funny progessive comic strip. This week (April 3) features Bell mergers, Bellsouth’s disgraceful efforts to shut down the New Orleans muni wireless network, Bellsouth’s efforts to get the LA legislature to pass antimuni bills, and today why we need network neutrality.

Must send fan letter to Darrin Bell. He can say in four panels what it took me a whole essay to say.

Stay tuned . . . .

Technoparanoia at its finest

When it comes to distrust of the concept of “progress” and general dread of the technopoly in our future, I yield to few. Frinstance, my stunning novel Acts of the Apostles (free download, look to the left of this page) might be characterized as a dystopian Orwellian panic attack (with hot chicks and car chases, etc.) inspired by molecular-nano technology (MNT). However this morning I must doff my virtual technoparanoid cap to Damien Broderic, an SF author and comparative semiotician. Check out this essay, which I discovered via Kurzweil AI:

Can civil societies absorb the impact of MNT without degenerating almost instantly into Hobbesian micro states, where the principal currency is direct power over other humans, expressed at best as involuntary personal service and, at the worst, sadistic or careless infliction of pain and consequent brutalization of spirit in slaves and masters alike? It is a disturbing prospect, more worrying than crazed individuals or sectarian terrorists. Are we, indeed, doomed to this outcome through frailties in our evolved nature, unsuited to such challenges, or perhaps to the rapacity of the current global economy?

A deeper question might be this: even if we assume that rich consumerist and individualist First World cultures like the USA might be prone to such collapse, is that true of all extant societies? Might more rigid or authoritarian societies have an advantage, if their citizens or subjects are too cowed by existing power structures to dash headlong into lawlessness? Might technologically simpler and poorer societies, possessing fewer goods to begin with and perhaps having fewer rising expectations, rebuff the temptations of MNT? Or might they seize upon such machines eagerly, but distribute them and their cornucopia, if only locally, on models of community or tribe unfamiliar to us in the West?

Now that, my friends, is the true technoparanoid goods! I stand in awe. In honor of which I hereby institute the office of Honorary Wetmachiner (Wetmechanic?), and confer it upon our worthy expostulator from Down Under.

Chevy: Giving You the Tools to Mock Them

As a promotion of their new godawful planet-destroying SUV, Chevy gave us, the humble web denizens a chance to sing their praises by stitching together our own commercials selling their product. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, funny thing about web denizens… they tend not to do what you like.

As reported by Total Tactics some people are saying some unkind things about Chevy’s new behemoth.

Not to feel left out, I’ve added my own humble effort.

I am Jack Abramoff

For me, the story of Jack Abramoff is not the story of a corrupt DeLay catspaw finally brought to justice, ultimately bringing down DeLay himself. Nor is it a celebratory tale of the hypocrisy of those who profess religion while behaving corruptly. For me, it is a tragedy and cautionary tale that raises fundamental questions about the viability of Modern Orthodox Judaism and one of its central tennets: that a one can fully embrace modernity while fully embracing the teachings of our sages and leading a life dedicated to God. Quite literally, “there but for the grace of God go I,” and may yet. What then is my moral duty to myself, my family and my God?

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Anonymous bidding and not so anonymous shakedowns at the FCC

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Say what you like about Martin in other areas, but he is (so far) sticking to his guns on whether to require anonymous bidding for the upcomming AWS spectrum auction. MAP has actively supported this proposal, because it will make the auctions work better and facilitate entry by minority owned businesses and new, disruptive competitors (I’m stuck with them by statute, so I may as well try to get them to work right).

In perhaps the most telling evidence that anonymous/blind/sealed bidding (in which the identity of the bidder is not disclosed during the action) is a good idea, every incumbent (except VZ Wireless, which has been “targeted” in certain auctions) is lobbying fiercly against it. My favorite little tidbits of when the Sausage Factory turns nasty below.

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An Examination of the Economics of Whitacre Tiering

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Today’s lecture in my occassional “Economics of Market Power” series comes from the hot policy debate over whether we should let dsl (and cable) providers charge third parties for “premium” speeds to reach their customers. I call this behavior “Whitacre Tiering” (as distinguished from other sorts of tiering traffic or bandwidth) in honor of AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, a chief proponent of the concept.

Last time, I explained why permitting Whitacre tiering would be a disaster for democracy. This time, I’ll explain why Whitacre tiering produces really, really awful results from an economic perspective. It gives actors all the wrong incentives, adds new layers of uncertainty and inefficiency to the market generally, and discourages investment in bandwidth capacity at every stage of the network (thus aggravating the broadband incentives problem you may have read about recently, rather than solving it, as some defenders of Whitacre tiering maintain).

But hey, don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger! Go do the math yourselves. All you need is a basic knowledge of Econ 101. OTOH, if you have a religious belief, possibly supported by self-interest or fueled by PAC money, that all deregulation is good and all regulation is bad, mmmkay (not that Senator Enisgn is likely to ever read this), I expect you will remain unpersuaded. Rather like passionate believers in Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the cosmos, I expect the true believer neo-cons, the companies whose self-interests are implicated, and their wholly owned subsidiaries in state and Federal legislatures, to devise theoretical models and epicycles to explain away all the nasty empirical problems and assure me I live in the delightful world of competition and frictionless switching to competitors.

It moves, it moves . . . .

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What did Martin Really Say About a “Tiered” Internet?

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Much has been made over statements made by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at this week’s TelecomNext trade show. As we at MAP have just had an experience with how often the press misunderstands Martin’s rather carefull statements, I am not as ready as many of my comrades to declare that the end is nigh. There is a huge difference between “customer tiering” (where a customer gets to chose the level of service), “provider provisioning” (where a provider pushes packets faster via Akami or bit torrent), and “Whitacre tiering” (where the ISP charges third parties for “premium” access to subscribers without regard to subscriber preferences). As explained below, figuring where Martin is proves harder than people assume.

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