Columbia Journalism Review has this article on unlicensed and its potential to revolutionize the media. I’m quoted, as are such luminaries as Eban Moglen and Dave Hughes and my co-conspirator Jim Snider from New America Foundation.
Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Inventing the Future:
Inventing the Future: iPods
Duke and other schools are giving iPods to students. This site explains that they are looking for innovative ways to introduce technology in education. Poems and lit. to go. School fight songs. Info on the frosh dorms. I think that’s great. Why be so focused on visual information? It’s interesting to me that cell phone surfing seems to be done on phones outfitted with tiny visual screens and abuses of keyboards. Why not aural displays and voice interfaces? (Although I’m not too keen on the image of zombie students walking around in their own little isolation enforced by earplugs piping in the university’s message.)
Duke doesn’t mention anything about file sharing, but I wonder how much of their IT push is also meant to get them off the hook that some universities have been placed on in order to try to force them to be responsible for the file-sharing actions of their students.
My Thoughts Exactly:
My wife wants to run away with John Gilmore!
Well, actually maybe that’s a bit of an exageration. But she does admire his stand for privacy and the principle that people should actually be allowed to read laws that they are required to follow. If you’re not familiar with John Gilmore, there’s a good account here of his suit against Mr. Ashcroft.
My wife also notes that Gilmore has $30 million, which is about $31 million more than I have. (She’s never met him, by the way; nor had she heard of him before reading the article.)
Neutrino:
Customers totally ignore security issues
So, security has been hyped in the press and especially in ads over the past few years… various IT ads talk about security, keeping out hackers, etc. But is Joe Sixpack actually paying attention?
Recently, Paris Hilton (one of those people it seems is simply famous for being famous… oh and for having her knookie tape broadcast all over the Internet) recently had her T-Mobile smartphone hacked, with its phone list of celebrities (and even pictures of her breasts taken with the camera phone) posted all over the web. T-Mobile’s security (or lack thereof) was at fault. This is just one of several breeches of security that has hit T-Mobile.
So, of course, the free market being what it is, people are now leaving T-Mobile in droves, especially eschewing the products that have been so famously hacked, right? Apparently not, as T-Mobile is selling out of Sidekicks, the unit Hilton owned that was hacked.
So, I guess what we have is the confluence of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” and “there’s a sucker born every minute.”
Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: In IL, Citizens 1, ILECs 0 (but it's just the first inning so keep your seats)
The Chicago Independent Media Center reports that the Ilinois Bill containing the anti-muni provision, Senate Bill 499, was not called in the IL Senate as expected. Negative publicity and citizen protest have apparently caused supporters of the bill to reconsider introducing it.
Score another one for the good citizens of IL and citizens everywhere! But, as the IMC article notes, this could well get buried in the general effort to reform the telecom rules in IL. We have the momentum, but the incumbents are very well financed and very patient.
Stay tuned . . . .
Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: UPDATE on 3650-3700 MHz
I have been making calls today. The situation is moving in a more favorable direction. The relevant decision makers are getting our emails and see broad popular support for mesh as well as high-power.
Key issues on which decisions have not yet been made and where comments may prove helpful:
1) Allowing low power mobile devices in the band is critical to expanding mesh.
2) Low power mesh requires non-exclusivity and cheap equipment. The Commission should not impose overly conservative interference protection criteria that drive up price. Flexibility has been critical to the success of unlicensed as a networking solution.
3) Mesh devices must be allowed to communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion, rather than requiring mesh devices to communicate with a high power base station.
4) Any system of licensing or registration must be non-exclusive; the Commission must not create a “first in time, first in right” licensing systems.
Remember, things are turning our way, but your comments are still needed to build a record to counter Intel and others. The Proceeding Number is 04-151. You can file comments by going here.
Stay tuned . . .
Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sauasage Factory: My editorial on Muniwireless
I’ve written an op ed that whether or not munies actually deploy systems, they need the option to keep the telco/cable duopoly from misbehaving. Available at:
http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000601.html
stay tuned . . . .
Neutrino:
Saying “I love you” with Science!
Well, here’s a novel use for bioengineering: culture a bone sample to grow onto a toroidal scaffold, and you can give a loved one a ring made out of your own bone.
Of course, after you die, you could also have your cremated ashes made into a diamond, and then set in that ring.
Nothing like saying “I love you” in an extreamely creepy way. Makes Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie’s idea of matching tattoos and vials of each other’s blood seem Victorian in comparison.
Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: Last Gasp on Unlicensed Order
As those who follow unlicensed proceedings at the FCC here know, the FCC has been considering opening up the 2650-3700 MHz band to unlicensed use. The rumor is that the FCC will vote on the item at its March 10 meeting. I have also heard that the item is not particularly friendly to mesh networks. We have until Wed. March 2, 2005, 5 p.m. Eastern Time to turn this around. Wanna help?
Inventing the Future:
Inventing the Future: enchancing performance
Like many people I’ve talked to, I tend to imagine using Croquet for automation. We envision physics and molecular chemistry simulations running on their own, while the people in the collaboration walk around among the ball and stick model forest and observe. Maybe we reach up and grab an atom or two and pull on it to see how that changes the path of the simulation. That’s my nature. I’m an engineer and I want to automate stuff so I don’t have to work so hard, even in visualization. I’m so lazy I even want to automate my imagination.
I worked for more than a dozen years creating some kind of automation or another. The biggest misconception I had to clear up with my clients was that you can’t automate what you don’t understand. You have to tell the computer exactly what to do. I learned this lesson in high school when we had a model bridge-building contest in physics class. Everyone assumed that I would design my bridge on a computer, and I sat down to try it.
