Craig Cline's Blog

Don't Neuter the Net

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:45:01 GMT

An important issue - please make yourself aware of it.

WINDOWS

Don't neuter the Net

Net neutrality legislation would stop bandwidth providers' power grab

By Oliver Rist
March 09, 2006

Senator Ron Wyden: We love you. Wyden’s the Oregon Democrat who introduced legislation this week seeking to end this attack on Net neutrality.

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InfoWorld's SOA Executive Forum: Lessons From the Front Lines

Greedy Telcos

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:55:40 GMT

From today's GMSV - its clear to me that greed is ruining this country.....

We thought you said spend the $200 billion on "dark fiber"

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI

The United States is the 19th ranked nation in household broadband connectivity rate, just ahead of Slovenia. Want to know why? Because, contends telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, the Bell Companies never delivered symmetrical fiber-optic connectivity to millions of Americans though they were paid more than $200 billion to do it. According to Kushnick's book, "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", during the buildup to the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, the major U.S. telcos promised to deliver fiber to 86 million households by 2006 (we're talking about fiber to the home, here). They asked for, and were given, some $200 billion in tax cuts and other incentives to pay for it. But the Bells didn't spend that money on fiber upgrades -- they spent it on long distance, wireless and inferior DSL services. Some headlines from Kushnick's work:

By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired with a fiber optic wire, capable of 45 Mbps, in both directions.

The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.

The World is Laughing at US. Korea and Japan have 100 Mbps services as standard, and America could have been Number One had the phone companies actually delivered. Instead, we are 16th in broadband and falling in technology dominance.

A damning list of indictments, and one that puts the telcos' demands for a two-tiered Internet in harsh perspective (see " 'Course what we'd really like to do is 'prioritize' some of these services right out of business ..." and "Interesting approach, Bill; why don't you try it on your phone network first?"). We paid an estimated $2000 per household for fiber to the home and instead got DSL over the old copper wiring. As Kushnick notes, that's like ordering a Ferrari and getting a bicycle. The Bells should be ashamed.
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Larry Smarr is Smart!

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:14:49 GMT

From Boing Boing - he's going to be at FiRE 06

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Xeni's report from iGRID2005 optical networks event

For Wired News today, I filed this report on the eye-popping technologies on display at this week's iGRID2005 conference at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

In the image above, Calit2 director Dr. Larry Smarr shows UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox a zoomable 100-megapixel display that shows live image data (1 foot = 1 pixel maps of post-Katrina NOLA, shot by the USGS) streamed over an encrypted fiber-optic network link. Nortel provided the encryption, and the University of Illinois' Electronic Visualization Laboratory made the display grid happen. There's a 30-machine Linux cluster behind the screen, and you could feel the heat coming off of them!

At one point, a woman who'd evacuated New Orleans walked up to the display and said to UIC's Jason Leigh, "Can we go to my house please?" We did, and we "went" to the Superdome and to burning buildings... in incredible detail. The interlinked displays made this information so much more lifelike than it is on a small laptop screen.

What do high-definition video of seafloor volcanoes and avant-garde Japanese digital cinema have in common? They're both examples of the kinds of bandwidth-intensive information that can be streamed live from remote locations, over ultra-fast optical networks.
And both were demonstrated this week at iGrid 2005. The week-long computing conference, which showcases research in high-performance, multi-gigabit networks, was held at UC San Diego's new Calit2 (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology) facility.
"When you can stream content this high-resolution, you can start thinking about movie theaters as a place where live events can be displayed -- sports, fashion, politics, anything," said Laurin Herr of Pacific Interface, an Oakland-based tech consulting firm that produced the demonstration. "What color film did to audiences used to viewing black and white, what stereo sound did to audiences used to hearing mono, high-definition digital cinema will do to us."
Jaw-dropping demos abounded, promising just as much for scientists as for Hollywood. One experiment on Tuesday featured the first-ever live, IP-based transmission of high-definition video from the bottom of the sea.

Link to Wired News story.

During one high-def demo, scientists on board a ship in the Pacific had hoped to submerge their research instruments for a second round of live undersea footage.

They'd dazzled everyone with a live video feed from the ocean floor the day before -- translucent seafloor critters, "black smoker" volcanic vents, with everything so clear, the water disappeared. Magical undersea life, transmitted live in super-high-def, over IP. The thousands of miles separating us from this remote underwater world just vanished.

But powerful storms made that too dangerous to repeat on Wednesday, so the cameras stayed on the ship instead, beaming realtime interviews of the increasingly woozy crew while the storm pitched and rocked their ship violently.

As we watched that footage, transmitted over IP to optical networks on shore by way of a 15mbps Ku-band satellite, John Orcutt of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography turned to Dr. Smarr in the theater and said "It's still amazing."

Dr. Smarr gazed at the screen and was silent for a moment. Then he replied, "That's because it's the real world."

Oh, and here are details and some little screengrabs from the avant-garde Noh movie: Link. It was pretty amazing, too!

Previously:

iGRID2005: Xeni's notes

Live webcast of undersea volcanoes @ IGRID2005

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:01:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

News Feed

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:05:00 GMT

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Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment
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Alan Kay: "Generate enormous dissatisfaction". I am entering the final sprint of completing a first draft of my book between now and Thanksgiving or so, so pardon my general bloggy sluggishness. My plan is to resume somewhat more active blogging in December and return in full blast by January.

In the meantime, here's something that caught my eye:

One of the computing pioneers whose work I've had the pleasure of digging into for my book is Alan Kay. In the course of my research I had occasion to read Kay's epic account of The Early History of Smalltalk. Smalltalk is the object-oriented programming language Kay created in the early 1970s at Xerox PARC (while he was also inventing much of the rest of modern computing). The paper is full of interesting stuff, but this observation near the end, about how to motivate yourself to tackle difficult challenges, jumped out at me:

A twentieth century problem is that technology has become too "easy". When it was hard to do anything whether good or bad, enough time was taken so that the result was usually good. Now we can make things almost trivially, especially in software, but most of the designs are trivial as well. This is inverse vandalism: the making of things because you can. Couple this to even less sophisticated buyers and you have generated an exploitation marketplace similar to that set up for teenagers. A counter to this is to generate enormous disatisfaction with one's designs using the entire history of human art as a standard and goal. Then the trick is to decouple the disatisfaction from self worth -- otherwise it is either too depressing or one stops too soon with trivial results.

"Generate enormous dissatisfaction" with one's work -- well, gee, that's something most ambitious people know how to do, one way or another. But such dissatisfaction quickly blossoms into neurotic self-doubt. Ergo Kay's careful recommendation to "decouple the dissatisfaction from self-worth": that's genius. And, I might add, really, really helpful to anyone laboring over a big project like, say, a book.

Of course, this means that you have to figure out other bases for self-worth than the work one has generated enormous dissatisfaction with!

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Plane Carrying 114 Goes Missing. An airliner carrying 114 people was reported missing shortly after taking off from the Nigerian city of Lagos, officials and media reported Sunday.

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Sunday Talk - America's Most Wanted Edition.

"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand." ~ Deep Throat. From the 1976 film "All the President's Men."

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Tom Delay's wanted poster

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Condi, bite your tongue!

Top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years

Cuban Missile Crisis

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Alchoholism,writers,BWI. BWI -Blogging While Intoxicated ... a little less dangerous than DWI, for the most part ... Can you discern a DWI rant from a sober one? What makes many famous writers alcholics? .. and somebody compiled an Amazon list of Top 13 Works of Fiction Dealing with Alcoholism ... ... hick ....

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:04:43 GMT

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Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment
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In the meantime, here's something that caught my eye:

Of course, this means that you have to figure out other bases for self-worth than the work one has generated enormous dissatisfaction with!

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WSJ.com: What's News US
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Plane Carrying 114 Goes Missing. An airliner carrying 114 people was reported missing shortly after taking off from the Nigerian city of Lagos, officials and media reported Sunday.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Slashdot
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Daily Kos
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday Talk - America's Most Wanted Edition.

"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand." ~ Deep Throat. From the 1976 film "All the President's Men."

Below the Fold:

The Full Sunday Lineup

Tom Delay's wanted poster

In the Comment Section

September 11th should never have occured

Nailing the Hammer (protest photos)

Indicting Rumsfeld for Torture

Lampooning Shrub and Delay

Talk of the Internets

Baaadaasss Women

Condi, bite your tongue!

Top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years

Cuban Missile Crisis

By Al Rodgers .

----------------------------------------------------------------------
DW-WORLD.DE News
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Vatican rules out married priests

Poland set for presidential runoff

Polls: Brazil to reject gun ban

High-ranking North Korean official dies

----------------------------------------------------------------------
MetaFilter
----------------------------------------------------------------------

test

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:31:05 GMT

KUOW radio on iPod brouhaha: Xeni + Glenn Fleishman. Xeni Jardin: Glenn Fleishman and I joined KUOW radio host John Moe for a segment asking "What's the big deal with the new iPod?" If you have nothing better to do with your bandwidth, listen here: Link to archived episide of "The Works" on KUOW-FM, Seattle. [Boing Boing]

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:02:44 GMT

This is so funny!

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 218)

October 17, 2005
Stage-Managed Edition

Conservative woes increased last week as George W. Bush (1) made a fool of himself during a live teleconference, leaving Scott McClellan (2) in the line of fire. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland of Security (3) has been scaring people, Harriet Miers' (4) personal papers were released, and the the Department of Defense (5) are screwing the troops. Elsewhere, Tom DeLay (6) is still in trouble, Ann Coulter (9) demonstrates conservative integrity, and John McCain (10) plays the hypocrite. Enjoy, and don't forget the <A href="javascript:openWin('/top10/key.html');">key!

George W. Bush
What's a president to do when faced with growing public discontentment and crashing poll numbers? If you're George W. Bush, the answer is clear: try to focus the nation's attention away from what a jackass you are, and regain some of that pre-election military mojo.

Which is exactly what Our Great Leader attempted to do last week, holding a live teleconference with some troops from the 42nd Infantry Division, all of whom coincidentally happened to agree with all of the Bush administration's current talking points on Iraq.

Here's George, participating in a totally spontaneous back and forth chat with the troops:

Wait a minute... the president appears to have dyed his hair. And lost some height. And turned into a woman.

Okay, you got me. That's not George W. Bush, that's Allison Barber of the Defense Department. And what was she doing there? Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the answer was revealed by the raw satellite feed streamed to news outlets before the teleconference began. The feed showed Ms. Barber carefully coaching the troops on what Bush was going to say, the techniques they should use when responding, and giving them an opportunity to rehearse their answers. Some choice quotes:

"Master Sergeant Lombardo, when you're talking about the president coming to see you in New York, take a little breath before that so you can actually be talking directly to him. You've got a real message there, okay?"

(snip)

"If the question comes up about partnering how often do we train with the Iraqi military who does he go to?"

(snip)

"...if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit the hometown and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?"

(snip)

"But if he gives us a question that's not something that we've scripted, Captain Kennedy, you're going to have that mic, and that's your chance to impress us all."

Hmmm. "Not something we've scripted," eh?

Funnily enough, even though the event was totally stage-managed and pre-packaged, Our Great Leader still managed to make a complete hash of it . Bush forgot about the satellite delay and talked across soldiers, stumbled over words and phrases (as usual), offered a completely disingenuous invitation for the troops to drop by and visit him any time they're in Washington, and at>Scott McClellan
But it was Scott McClellan who took the brunt of Bush's tomfoolery at the White House press conference which followed the teleconference. Unfortunately for Scott, he didn't know that the reporters already knew that the event was staged. Hilarity ensued:

Q: Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, I don't know what you're suggesting.

(snip)

Q: ...we asked you specifically this morning if there would be any screening of questions or if they were being told in any way what they should say or do, and you indicated no.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I don't think that's what the question was earlier today. I think the question earlier today was asking if they could ask whatever they want, and I said, of course, the President was - and you saw -

Q: And I asked if they were pre-screened.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: You saw earlier today the President was trying to engage in a back-and-forth with the troops...

(snip)

Q: But I also asked this morning, were they being told by their commanders what to say or what to do, and you indicated, no. Was there any prescreening of -

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm not aware of any such - any such activities that were being undertaken...

Worst. Press Secretary. Ever.

By the way, don't miss this Keith Olbermann segment on Bush's teleconference travesty - I promise you won't be disappointed!

Olbermann Part target=_blank>Olbermann Part Two
Olbermann Part Three

Videos hosted by CanOFun.com.

The Department of Homeland Security
Unlike Mike Brown, Keith Olbermann's been doing a heck of a job lately. As well as his hilarious exposé of Our Great Leader's Giant Stupid Teleconference, Olbermann reported last week on " The Nexus of Politics and Terror," citing numerous occasions when the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert level immediately following either bad news for the administration, or a speech on terror by George Bush.

Former Homeland Security head Tom Ridge outright admitted back in May of this year that during his tenure "he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or 'high' risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled" (see Idiots 198).

But that didn't stop the administration from trying to pull the same tired old trick in New York City last week, causing New Yorkers to... well, yawn and go about their business as usual.

We commented recently (see Idiots 217) on George W. Bush's "major speech" on Iraq and the war on terror at the National Endowment for Democracy, which basically involved him gabbing on and on about 9/11 (again). Just seven hours after that speech, a bomb threat warning was issued by New York City officials.

According to Olbermann's blog, the warning was "based on information supplied by the Federal Government," but it was later revealed that "a Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is 'of doubtful credibility.'" That intelligence was subsequently determined to be a hoax.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg: it seems that not target=_blank>according to the New York Daily News:

At least two E-mails revealing the purported plot were sent to a select crowd of business and arts executives early last week by New Yorkers who claimed to have close connections to Homeland Security and other federal officials, authorities said.

The NYPD confirmed that it learned of the E-mails on Oct. 3 - three days before Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the FBI went public with the threat.

But surely it was mere coincidence that despite days of foreknowledge the warnings were announced just hours after Bush's big speech on terrorism. And the fact that terror warnings have coincidentally followed bad news for Bush or big terrorism speeches on multiple occasions - well, um, that must be a coincidence too.

Harriet Miers
It looks like Harriet Miers is qualified after all! Perhaps not qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, admittedly, but certainly highly qualified to lick George W. Bush's boots.

Last week a handful of Miers' personal papers were released by the Texas State Library, "most of them routine legal memos, press releases and transcripts," according to Knight Ridder. But among those papers were a few personal notes from Miers to Bush, which reveal... well, let's see:

"You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect!" - Harriet Miers

"Cool!" - Harriet Miers

"You are the best!" - Harriet Miers

Can you imagine if she'd been on the court in 2000?

...in a Presidential election the clearly expressed intent of the legislature must prevail. And there is no basis for reading the Florida statutes as requiring the counting of improperly marked ballots, as an examination of the Florida Supreme Court's textual analysis shows that George W. Bush is the best governor ever - deserving of respect! We will not parse that analysis here, except to note that the principal provision of the election code on which it relied, §101.5614(5), was, as the Chief Justice pointed out in his dissent from Harris II, "cool."

The Department of Defense
Scenario: you volunteer to serve your country in the armed forces. You're sent to Iraq, where a bomb takes target=_blank>according to the Washington Post, "the government's computerized pay system is designed to 'maximize debt collection' and has operated without a way to keep bills from going to the wounded."

Now why am I not surprised? So much for "supporting the troops."

Tom DeLay
There was more bad news for Tom DeLay this week - according to the Austin American-Stateman, "Travis County prosecutors want to know how U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, purchased a 2004 Toyota Sienna minivan, subpoenaing all records surrounding the transaction, as well as telephone records from Delay, his campaign and his daughter."

The new subpoenas raise further questions - and not just about DeLay's alleged money-laundering activities. For example, why would someone so staunchly pro-American buy a Japanese car? And what would a manly Texas dude like DeLay want with the soccer mom's vehicle of choice?

Perhaps he was attracted to the 230-horsepower V-6 engine which, according to U.S. News and World Report, "shows a lot of chutzpah." And of course there's always the "numerous configurations that let you fold down any or all of the seats, depending on your hauling/chaufeurring needs," which would make it super-convenient for moving lobbyists, golf clubs, and tote-bags filled with non-sequential hundred dollar bills.

Top 10 Conservative Idiots exclusive: thanks to a talented DU cameraman with an extremely long lens, we have obtained this photograph of DeLay's actual 2004 Toyota Sienna:

The Pentagon
I just thought you should know that according to Fox News, "Pentagon officials are denying that a live video conference between President Bush and U.S. troops in Iraq was staged."

In a related story, Milli Vanilli want their Grammys reinstated.

Lou Beres
Won't somebody think of the children? Lou Beres, "longtime head of the Christian Coalition of Oregon," apparently has been. Last week he stepped down from his position and said he will "withdraw from political life" after he was accused of sexual abuse by three of his relatives.

According to the Seattle Times:

The three women - now adults - allege they were abused by Beres as preteens. Their families called the child abuse hot line last month, after the three openly discussed the alleged abuse for the first time.

"I was molested," target=_blank>website, "The Christian Coalition of Oregon is committed to representing the pro-family agenda and educating America on the critical issues facing our society."

Perhaps someone should explain to Lou Beres that "pro-family" doesn't mean "banging your pre-teen relatives."

Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter revealed the full extent of her integrity last week on Sean Hannity's radio show and you'll be unsurprised to learn that, yes, Ann Coulter has no integrity.

During a conversation with Hannity and Brent Bozell, Coulter remarked that the administration is not telling the truth about the Harriet Miers nomination. "They're treating us like liberals lying to us," she said. "When they lie to conservatives, we have a problem."

So there you have it - Ann Coulter admits that the administration is a bunch of liars, it's just that when she thought they were src="http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/icons/top10-10.gif" widthU align=left>John McCain
And finally, Sen. John McCain criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week for holding "carefully staged campaign events," according to Reuters. "The benefit of an open town hall meeting is target=_blank>barred from attending. The Washington Post reported back in March that "McCain has been especially supportive of his target=_blank>loyalty oaths.

Here's a picture of McCain sternly taking Bush to task at a campaign rally in 2004:

What was that about credibility again? See you next week!

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:02:03 GMT

dogbert

Old Page Maill Road Rediscovered on Google Earth

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 19:08:21 GMT

While messsing around with Google Earth today I found the long "lost" Old Page Mill Road. This road, which leads to a lake, has been officially expunged from all current maps. Officially, it isn't suppoed to be there.. That's what good aspect of the time machine quality to so many of Google's satellite views - becuase many of the images are decades old, you can find things on it that aren't supposed to be there.

We've heard stories from old timers that there is a lake nearby that was a wonderful place for boating, swimming and eating, complete with clubhouse and other amenities. But sometime int he past 15 years it was shut down because of envirinmental concerns. It sits somewher ein the hills around here, not officially there, even though all the buildings and the lake are still there.