There’s a hearing tomorrow on the rewrite of the Communications Act proposed by House Commerce Commitee Chair Barton and Ranking member Dingell. Some friend of mine would like you to take action to let your elected representative know that you care about the provision in the bill that supports muni broadband.
More details here.
Stay tuned . . .
Sorry to go dark so long. I was on the West Coast pretty much all last week, then came home in time for the Jewish New Year. Lots of stuff to blog about and will try to do updates over the next week or so.
Last week, I was at the amzing and cool conference put together by Esme Vos of muniwireless.com. Esme is proof of why the Internet is such a wonderful tool. With nothing more than interest and dedication two years ago, she created the muniwireless website which is now a central news source and repository of information about municipal wifi.
I’ve attached below the speech I gave at the conference last week. It’s 6 pages, so it’s kinda long.
Stay tuned . . . .
While not often disagreeing with Groklaw, I did have a concern with this piece on open standards and disaster relief. While agreeing with the general gist — that proprietary standards can hinder relief efforts and that open platforms can maximize the number of people helped — the problem of interconnecting communications services is not generally an open standards problem. It is an open spectrum problem — and one we could solve today.
If you’re going to shake up the FCC’s open meeting by focusing on Katrina and moving to Bell South’s emergency HQ, why couldn’t Martin have focused a little bit on the future? Rather than looking at the way in which technology changed relief, Martin summoned the usual industry suspects who, unsurprisingly, explained to the FCC why they need regulatory goodies to better serve the public. Perhaps the Chairman can be persuaded to hold another meeting or forum a month or two down the road to look at where we should go, not where we’ve been.
It has been the sort of comedy of bureaucracy that would make you laugh if it didn’t make you cry. We have real heroes in action on the ground, and volunteers in holding patterns, and a road to Hell paved with real great intentions.
Please distribute this broadly.
At 2 p.m., I participated in a conference call hosted by the FCC Chief of Staff on how network operators providing service with license exempt spectrum can assist in re-establishing critical voice, data and video service in areas devestated by Katrina.
Part-15.org is taking
the lead in organizing volunteers and donations of equipment from individuals,
WISPs and community wireless networks. Companies such as Cisco and Intel are
also heavily involved.
THERE IS AN URGENT NEED FOR DONATIONS OF EQUIPMENT AND VOLUNTEERS FROM THE TECH
COMMUNITY WILLING TO TRAVEL TO THE AREA EFFECTED BY KATRINA. Interested parties
can volunteer or describe contributions through www.part-15.org (there is a link
on the front page).
There is freely available software and instructions on how to convert a computer and wireless router into a mesh network node from the Champaign Urbana Wireless Network. Their website is http://www.cuwireless.net/
The FCC will remain open throughout the holiday weekend to address the crisis. Coordination efforts are ongoing, but part-15.org hopes to have a preliminary asset list for coordination with federal authorities by Noon Saturday 9/3/05. It would therefore be enormously helpful to hear from people who can donate equipment or time, even if they cannot provide the equipment or time until a later date.
Harold Feld
Senior VP
Media Access Project
Every now and again I still dabble in DNS. Two recent developments are worthy of note here. First, the Fourth Circuit reached the right decision in the fight over the jerryfalwell.com website. After nearly ten years of bad decisions by ignorant judges, it is good to see some common sense coming into play. Too bad it is too late to help my former comrade in arms Mike Doughney and his Peta.Org website.
Second item makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Turns out U.S. domination of ICANN is o.k. as long as the US works to keep pornography out of the DNS. Turns out love (of a sort) will bring us together . . . .
After a brief vacation from the 21st Century, I am back on the job and as puzzled as ever by this USA Today story.
A quick hit now as I dig my way out on my return from vacation.
For anyone interested in commenting on the fight between Continental, Logan and its wider implications for users of non-exclusive wireless, the FCC has extended the deadline for comments. Comments now due September 28 and replies due October 13 (conflicting with Yom Kippur).
Stay tuned . . .
I’m off for a week or so. See you all when I get back.
Stay tuned . . .
But while the uproar has swayed much of the public to Johansson's defense at a time when #genAI is increasingly under scrutiny, this may not quite be an open-and-shut case should she decide to sue . Read the breakdown from @M_F_Rose in her latest article:
The release of @OpenAI's new digital assistant "Sky" stirred controversy after actress Scarlett Johansson alleged that the company had infringed on her rights by using a soundalike voice of hers after she'd declined to voice it herself.
Just saw @MargotSusca fantastic interview with @adamconover about the death of local news at the hands of hedge funds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA A theme I have written about *a lot*. Like this blog post from 2018: https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/we-need-to-fix-the-news-media-not-just-social-media-part-i/ This has been a long time in the making.
I wrote yesterday on the terrifying escalation of antisemitism in Canada, citing events just over past week. Now there is more: last night a firebomb attempt at a Vancouver synagogue. Daily antisemitic incidents is who we are now.
https://www.jewishvancouver.com/important-community-updates-may-20-2024
https://x.com/mgeist/status/1796233336203194446
