Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Boston City Council “Wicked OTAHD-ed”

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According to this article, the City of Boston is considering banning or otherwise regulating the placement of DBS receiver dishes. The article reports that in a number of places these have become real eye sores, especially where a tenant moves out and just leaves the dish. Also, DBS comapnies are increasingly puting dishes in windows rather than all the way on roofs, and are generally not that concerned with keeping the neighborhood looking pretty.

Nevertheless, after the trouncing the FCC gave Massport last month over OTARD, this is pretty silly. Or, as those of us from Boston might say “wicked OTAHDed.”

Now there are ways the City can try to deal with the esthetic problems. For example, it could mandate that landlords permit use of rooftops for DBS providers (one big problem is often that landlords sign exclusive deals with incumbent cable operators, so only tennants with a southern exposure window can subscribe). Or Boston might require that any tenant that terminates DBS service remove the dish or who moves must remove the receiver dish. The city could probably require that if a DBS or other provider comes to install a dish and finds a “dead dish” connected to the residence, the DBS provider must remove it (I’m a little leary of this one because it imposes additional costs on the DBS provider and therefore may be preempted by federal law).

These are just ideas off the top of my head, so they may not be plausible. If the City of Boston wants some help, I recommend the Boston University Law School Legislative Drafting Clinic (of which I am an alum). But I hope they resist the urge to just pass something stupid that a federal judge will smack down in five minutes. That never helps anyone, and is especially irritating when taking a bit of time and effort to get it right can save everyone some grief down the road.

Stay tuned . . . .

Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 2: Every Application Architecture Has Plenty of Languages

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Last time: “What Do Buyers Want?,” in which I said that employers want specialists in technologies, which doesn’t really help the employers solve problems.
Now: Where does that leave us? Where’s the language vendor in this picture? Where does the language guru go?

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
GAO Report: Believing in Competition Doesn’t Make It Happen

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Sometimes I think that the D.C. Circuit and the Republicans running the various Commerce Committees are the Arch Priests of Kiplings Gods of the Market, and it has brow-beaten the poor FCC through repeated reversals accompanied by tongue lashings into embracing this nonsense. The chief tenant of the Gods of the Market Place is that by deregulating the industry, competition emerges and consumers enjoy all the happiness that comes from a competitive environment. If this fails to happen as expected, adherents of the Gods of the Market practice a discipline called “Denial of Reality.” Practitioners of Denial of Reality believe that if you sufficiently discredit people who tell you about actual reality, and keep repeating that the reality you want actually exists, then Actual Reality will eventually by browbeaten into conforming to the reality promised by the Gods of the Market Place. And the FCC, like a good little penitent, keeps trying to produce reports that give the D.C. Circuit and the Republicans in Congress the world they want to see rather than actual reality.

Sadly, as GAO studies keep demonstrating, wishing for competition doesn’t make it so. This latest GAO Report on the lack of competition for business customers in major urban areas (and nicely explained in this piece here) is but the latest in a series of real world reports demonstrating that you can only ignore reality for so long before it bites you in the tender places. Sadly, however, it chomps down hard on the just and the unjust alike.

My analysis below . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Latest AT&T/BS Merger Twist, and Why Bill Kennard Case is Different from Robert McDowell’s

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In the latest chapter of the FCC’s most gripping “telecomnovella” Death Star Reborn: The AT&T/BellSouth Merger, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has set in motion the process to get 3rd Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell “unrecused”. The FCC has been deadlocked 2-2 because Commissioner McDowell used to represent CompTel, one of the groups opposing the merger, creating a conflict of interest. (You can see my previous coverage explaining all this here.)

McDowell, while not champing at the bit to be unrecused, has announced he’s ready to serve if the FCC’s General Counsel tells him he has to vote to break the deadlock. So it becomes possible to get this done before the new Congress takes over. Although why this should be such a big deal is beyond me, since it’s not like Congress can directly interfere with FCC merger review, and the indirect threats for payback are already on the table.

Martin, conscious of the controversial nature of the move, wrote a letter to the Chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Commerce Committees explaining the need for such extraordinary action. In doing so, Martin observed that the FCC General Counsel had previously authorized former FCC Chairman William E. Kennard to break a 2-2 deadlock despite Kennard’s previous recusal.

Now some months back, when folks first started wondering about the “McDowell Option,” I opined that while the FCC General Counsel could force McDowell to vote, such a move would be “extraordinary” and “To the best of my knowledge, it has never happened.” So what’s all this about Kennard then?

Art Brodsky does an excellent job explaining why the Kennard situation was radically different. But, my honor being involved and all, I decided to dig a bit deeper. As explained below, the facts on the Kennard case were so bizzare and different (starting with the fact that Kennard had not been legally required to recuse himself in the first place but had done so, in his own words “out of an abundance of caution”), that I still think my original statement stands and that, if the FCC unrecuses McDowell, and requires him to vote, it’s really breaking new ground.

More detail than you could possibly want (including a timeline and relevant quotes from Kennard’s public statement in 2000 on unrecusing himself) below….

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 1: What Do Buyers Want?

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In 2002 I gave an invited talk at a Lisp conference in San Francisco. I was scheduled while I was Technical Strategist at a hotshot Lisp-like company founded by Tim Berners-Lee. I gave the talk right after the strategy department was disolved and I was fired with it. (John was in the same department.)

As I remember, it wasn’t well received. (But I was pretty grumpy at the time and considered myself to be not well received by the world in general.) The writing and speaking wasn’t great, and some of the ideas were marginal. But I think a lot of the ideas have stood up pretty well, and I still believe them. I’m going to serialize it here, so that I can reference it in future blogs.

Abstract

The last few years have seen a lot of new language development, but commercial success has eluded many good language companies. A framework for success is presented, in which language systems are recast as open platforms for some class of application. Multi-tier marketing is examined, in which a free or low cost application enlarges the platform’s community, while revenues are produced on an upper-tier product or service. The presentation will be followed by a fishbowl discussion, in which everyone is encouraged to join the conversation.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Company Challanges Cell Phone Jammer Ban on Public Safety Grounds

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CellAntenna, a company that sells wireless equipment, has decided to challenge the FCC’s ban on cell phone jammers. As some of you may recall, about a year and a half ago the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau issued a public notice that 47 U.S.C. 333 makes it illegal for people to market or use cell phone jammers in this country. (By which I mean active intentional jamming, as the jury is still out on the passive cellphone jamming nano-paint.)

According to the article, CellAntenna has some theory that Section 333 and the FCC’s general authority under the Communications Act are trumped by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Since cell phones are used by terrorists to trigger bombs, they appear to argue in the article, the public security mandate outweighs Sec. 333 and the FCC’s determination on its general authority over the use of radio spectrum to prohibit cell phone jammers.

I confess that, based solely on the reading from the article, I’m highly skeptical. Why?
See below . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Markey to Take Telecom Subcommittee

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Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has confirmed he will take the Telecom Subcommittee rather than seek chairmanship of the Resources Committee.

I can’t think of better news to close out 2006. Ed Markey displays that rare, brilliant combination of staying true to his principles at all times while still working well in coalition and with his counterparts accross the aisle. On just about every issue I can think of: net neutrality, media ownership, privacy, fair use, consumer protection, digital inclusion, Ed Markey has been a champion and leader.

Whoooooo Hoooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned!

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Rethinking the Paradigm: From “Theft of Wi-Fi” to Public Nuisance or “My Noisy Neighbor, Mr. Lynkisis”

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This recent piece on mobile phones that use VOIP through open access points has revived the debate on whether your use of an open access point constitutes “theft” of wifi or “tresspass” into my neighbor’s network.

I’d like to suggest that we flip this and ask a different question: is my noisy neighbor Mr. Lynksis, who blasts his access point into my home thus causing interference and potentially screwing up my own network settings, a public nuisance? And if so, what should I do about Mr. Lynksis, the noisy neighbor that I may not even be able to locate with certainty?

As I argue below, I think we should establish by law that any open access point detectable by standard hardware and software is available for public use (assuming I have a legal right to be in the physical location I’m in when I detect the network). Such a law will poduce positive social benefits, whereas a presumption that use of an open access point is “stealing wifi” produces social costs.

My analysis below . . . .

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Babelicioius Porn

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I saw the Cannes Film Festival “Best Director” prize winner Babel last night at the newly re-opened Capawok. This is the third film in a series, the other two being 21 Grams and Amores Perros.

After seeing the film I glanced at a few online reviews to see what others had made of it. Andrew O’Hehir of Salon, for example, liked a lot of what I liked about it and didn’t like some of the things that I didn’t like. Actually, I liked some stuff that he didn’t. He said it was philospophically lightweight, but I don’t think it was at all. Others have said it was more philosophically lightweight that the other two movies in this series, and there again I disagree.

However, no review that I’ve seen (I’ve only read a few) mentioned what to me was the most jarring thing about the movie, which was the exploitation of children; in particular of the child actors. There are scenes in this movie, whole themes, that very explicitly involve the sexual confusion of adolescents and the terror of very young children in bewildering, frightening situations. Especially in the case of the younger children, there is no way that they were “acting” confused and terrified. They were made so by the director, and he filmed them. The sexual scenes were in no way prurient, but I still found myself pulled totally out of the movie and thinking about the actors. Maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy, but I think there are things you just shouldn’t ask young actors to do. I think the movie could have worked as well without several of the scenes; I’m thinking of the minor subplot about the boy and his sister in Morrocco. I’m less bothered by the Tokyo subplot because it’s about an older child and it’s central to the story. Nevertheless I think it was exploitative.

Are there certain things you can do in literature that you just can’t do in movies without breaking the implicit contract between children and adults? I think the answer is yes.

UPDATE

I sent a note to a friend of mine, a longtime working Hollywood TV/movie actor & recently award-winning producer. I asked him to tell me if I was being too prudish. Here was is his answer:


I liked Babel very much, flawed though it was. I thought the Japanese
segment was nothing short of astonishing- the disco sequence is far and away
one of the best pieces of cinema I’ve seen in some time. I think he
generally pushes the drama too far, bordering on ludicrous, but I also think
he manages a “reality” few filmmakers can come close to, and I believe
you’re suggesting this “reality” is too real for the kids in the film. My
answer is- I doubt it. I suspect that it’s all staged on the up and up and
that he’s just that good a director. I could be wrong, but the financing
deals alone for these type of film ventures demand very professional,
heavily insured productions, and there are laws about this stuff. If you’re
saying that “reality” or no, kids shouldn’t be in those kind of situations,
I also disagree. They likely do more/worse on their own, and the positive
lesson kids learn as they participate in discipline and hard work that goes
into actual filmmaking would most likely overshadow the situations they’re
depicting.

Plus, my wife tells me that the actress in the Japan story is 25 years old. To be clear, my concern was about the actors, not about the story being told or the characters portrayed by the actors. So maybe I went overboard. I’m not quite at Emily Litella’s “nevermind”, but maybe a bit closer to it.

My Thoughts Exactly:
The precogs are here

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In Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, police detect and arrest for pre-crime; crime that has not yet been committed. Pre-crime is detected by precognition, and the entities that perform this future-seeing are called “Precogs”. This goes one step beyond Orwell’s Thought Police, who prosecute for bad thoughts. In the land of Minority Report, prosecution is for thoughts and actions that have not even occured.

Here we have an article about Sigard(tm) precognitive hardware and software from an outfit called “Sound Intelligence” that, it claims, “can also detect verbal aggression with a high level of accuracy.”


Combined with closed circuit television systems, Sigard can quickly notify security personnel about loud, angry people in outdoor public spaces, public transportation, nightclubs and bars.

Here’s how it works. A single analysis computer accepts sensor input from a variety of locations. Once the software detects a verbally aggressive human voice, it activates the camera associated with that sensor, bringing it to a security guard’s attention. This helps cut down on the number of people needed to monitor CCTVs.

Sigard Sound Intelligence software imitates the way that humans deal with sound, splitting it into different frequencies with varying amounts of energy. Just as a person can immediately detect anger and aggression in the midst of background noise, Sound Intelligence software “listens” for the same parameters that humans use in detecting aggressive speech.

This system is already in place in a few locations in the Netherlands. Police in the UK are also considering installing the system.

If this seems creepy to you, Another Sign of Overmind Emergent (ASOE(tm)), then you too might be a technoparanoiac Wetmechanic. Welcome to the club.