Tales of the Sausage Factory: Will Janet Jackson's Bosom Baring Kill Comcast/Disney Deal

Granted its a cute headline, but what the heck am I talking about? Comcast and Disney had nothing to do with Ms. Jackson’s little “costume malfunction” and besides, isn’t this just a case of standard election year pandering by legislators on a nothing issue? Welcome, dear readers, to Washington Land, an E-Ticket Ride in the funhouse where surface appearances are very decieving . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory: Unlicensed Spectrum Access Part I

In 2003, “wifi” went from geek toy to mainstream. But WiFi is only part of a much larger revolution in how people access and use the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, numerous competing and ill-fiting anaologies, “property,” “public commons,” “public trust” battle it out among Washington regulators. What’s at stake? While it sounds hyperbolic, this regulatory battle ground holds the key to the next stage of evolution of information technology. This is a background piece. I will post the current developments piece later.

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Tales of The Sausage Factory: CBS caves again for Bush

For those of you haven’t followed, Bush and the Republican leadership fought off an broad attempt by Congress to roll back the national television ownership cap to 35%. The compromise was to freeze the limit at 39%, which means that Viacom (parent of CBS) and News Corp. (parent of Fox) don’t have to sell off any stations. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) says that CBS has paid the administration back for this favor by refusing to sell time to an anti-bush ad on the Superbowl.

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Fileswapping: A coda

just a brief coda on my predictions for file swapping. According to The Washington Post, fileswapping is up again in October and November after declining steadily from June to September. I note that coincides somewhat with the college year, if new students get oriented in August/Sept., get a taste of broadband, and start fileswapping. that last is just speculatiuon on my part.

Stay tuned . . . .