Monday, February 02, 2004

Monday's must-reads [Salon.com] 10:31:35 PM    comment []

Michael Watkins: On Not Getting Tenure. [Scripting News] A first-person review of an unsuccessful tenure bid at the Harvard Business School. Keep the POV in mind and it's an instructive read. 10:27:59 PM    comment []

I got through to hoder's blog finally. 1:41:37 PM    comment []

Benton Headlines is back! And with Kevin Taglang, besides! FCC BASED MEDIA OWNERSHIP RULES ON FAULTY INFORMATION Late last week Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) released a new national survey of where people turn for local news which revealed that newspapers are more than twice as important a source than the Federal Communications Commission determined when it relaxed its media ownership rules. The groups say the findings dramatically illustrate the FCC's irrational basis for allowing more media mergers in local markets. Consumers Union and CFA have intervened in the legal challenge to the FCC's rules, claiming the FCC has no rational basis for allowing mergers between local TV stations and newspapers in 90% of local markets. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case Feb. 11 in Philadelphia. See full survey results at Consumers Union, Press Release. CU also has more on the court battle over the FCC's new rules, and you can also check out the Media Access Project. TELEPHONE SUBSCRIBERSHIP REPORT On Friday, the FCC released its latest report on telephone subscribership levels in the United States, showing that approximately 95.2% of all households had telephone service. The report presents subscribership statistics based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the Census Bureau in July 2003. The report also shows subscribership levels by state, income level, race, age, household size, and employment status. The report shows some nagging gaps in telephone subscribership: 1) The telephone penetration rate was 80.4% for households with annual incomes below $5,000, while the rate for households with incomes over $75,000 was 99.3%. 2) Households headed by whites had a penetration rate of 96.0%, while those headed by blacks had a rate of 90.5% and those headed by Hispanics had a rate of 91.4%. 3) By age, penetration rates ranged from 86.9% for households headed by a person under 25 to 97.4% for households headed by a person between 65 and 69. This report is updated three times a year. For additional information contact Alexander Belinfante at (202) 418-0944. [SOURCE: FCC] NTIA CALL FOR COMMENTS IN TWO SPECTRUM PROCEEDINGS Last Friday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) invited interested parties to file comments on an expansion of the 3650-3700 MHz band to unlicensed devices for wireless broadband applications such as WiFi while protecting federal operations in those bands from interference or other adverse effects. Comments are due on or before February 27, 2004. See this NTIA page for the Notice of Inquiry. Also last week, NTIA asked for public participation in the President's Spectrum Initiative. NTIA invited comments on spectrum policy reform from all interested parties in a Federal Register Notice to be published today, February 2. The Administration announced its commitment to develop and implement a modernized United States spectrum policy. Pursuant to this commitment, the Secretary of Commerce is conducting a comprehensive review to develop recommendations for improving the United States' spectrum management policies regarding the organization, processes, and procedures affecting Federal government, State, local and private sector spectrum use. For more information see this NTIA page for the Spectrum Initiative [SOURCE: NTIA] 11:41:21 AM    comment []

Why Bill Gates' antispam plan won't work, by David Coursey, ZDNet AnchorDesk. Of course, administering this will be a mess. Dealing with zillions of micropayments going to just about everyone can't be easy or fun. And that's where I think Bill's idea is going to run into a snag. It's almost like creating a state-run economy. Not that Coursey's proposed solution (charge postage) is simple to implement. Nor does it avoid consolidating power in the hands of a few: remember peering? 10:41:10 AM    comment []

(I can't get through to hoder's English blog. ANyone else? I can follow links to posts in Farsi, but not to the English one; it just hangs.) 7:22:27 AM    comment []

It gets that much closer to the fan: One-Third of Iranian Parliament Quits in Protest, by Nazila Fathi, NYT. One by one, angry lawmakers who have held a three-week sit-in at the huge Parliament building, marched up to the podium and handed their resignations to the speaker. In an emotional statement read aloud during the session of Parliament on Sunday and broadcast live across the nation on Iranian radio, the members who resigned accused powerful conservatives of seeking to impose a religious dictatorship like that of the Taliban, who were overthrown by American- led forces in Afghanistan. We cannot continue to be present in a Parliament that is not capable of defending the rights of the people and that is unable to prevent elections in which the people cannot choose their representatives, the statement said. . . . The resignations were a move typical of the brinkmanship that marks Iranian politics, to try to get the hard-liners to back down three weeks before a crucial election that will determine the future of the reform movement in Iran. The student news agency ISNA reported that a pro-democracy Iranian student group said Sunday that it had sought permission to hold public demonstrations on Wednesday to protest the ban, a move that could provoke a clash with riot police officers and vigilante groups. The mass resignation coincided with what was supposed to be a day of national celebration, the 25th anniversary of the return to Iran of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from exile in France. The cleric led a popular Islamic revolution that brought an end to the 2,500-year monarchy and ushered in an Islamic Republic. . . . Under the law, Parliament must approve the resignations and can reject them if they would deny the body the two-thirds quorum it needs to operate. But those who resigned said they would refuse to take part in the sessions even if their resignations were refused. Many of the allies of Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 revolution are reformist politicians today, and they contend that today's hard-liners have gone against the tenets of Ayatollah Khomeini. They recall his emphasizing the republican nature of his government and saying that the criterion is the people's vote. From the day we held the referendum in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini insisted on an Islamic Republic â€  not a word less and not a word more, he kept saying, said Mr. Karoubi, the Parliament speaker. He repeated this until he died. Now we see that a couple of old men want to run the country, he added, referring to the council. . . . As many as 28 provincial governors threatened to resign, and a dozen cabinet ministers said they were determined to quit if the Guardian Council did not back off from its decision, which they called undemocratic. President Khatami hinted Saturday that his government would call off the vote if it could not hold elections that were both competitive and free. 7:15:06 AM    comment []

Seth has a new Readership Analysis, or my numbers for "punditry is not democracy". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or, in search of a gatekeeper. 7:09:46 AM    comment []

Digital music revolution changing the tune (AFP). AFP - 2004 will be the year of a new generation of mobile jukeboxes and telephones that will revolutionise how the world listens to music. [Yahoo! News - Technology] [Ted Ritzer: Free Music] 7:06:53 AM    comment []

A Legal Approach to Music. In the digital age, the recording industrys continuous search for new talent includes scouting promising young intellectual property lawyers. Also: the most popular music, software, TV shows and movies. [New York Times: Business] 7:04:07 AM    comment []

Early Worm Gets SCO Bird. SCO confirms the MyDoom worm has paralyzed the company's website -- as intended by the worm's creators. The speed and severity of the attack surprises security officials. [Wired News] 7:02:53 AM    comment []

Social Beasts Blogs Social Network Design-fu. Molly Steenson has started Social Beasts about social network design. I've known Molly since the Olden Days of the Web: she was the first employee of what turned out to be Electric Minds. Lately, she's been a professor at Interaction-Ivrea in Italy. She's sharp . Aggregate her! [Smart Mobs] 7:00:27 AM    comment []

Technology and Worker Efficiency. Researchers seem confident that technology has made American workers more efficient. Now some think they even know why. By Steve Lohr. [New York Times: Business] 6:58:38 AM    comment []

Finger MyDoom authors for $250,000. As foretold by the readers of computer virus entrails, the SCO website was attacked today by the MyDoom worm and taken offline. Microsoft is apparently next on the hit list, due to be targeted on February 6th. Hence the $250K reward Microsoft is offering for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perps. [Purportal.com Headlines] 6:55:27 AM    comment []

Now at The Edge: LANGUAGE, BIOLOGY, AND THE MIND (A Talk with Gary Marcus). Gary Marcus is a young research psychologist whose interest in the literature of biology and resulted in new and interesting ideas about the biological basis of mind. He believes that the mechanisms that build our brains are just a special case of the mechanisms that build the rest of our body. The initial structure of the mind, like the initial structure of the rest of the body, is a product of our genes. His goal is twofold: (a) to track closely the progress in genetics, and try to think about the question of how a tiny number of genes can lead you from an ancestral chimpanzee view of the world to a human view of the world; and (b) to rethink linguistics as a question of adapting from primate systems that are already in place. Instead of assuming that everything about language is sui generis—independent of the rest of the cognitive system—or the opposite extreme, which the anti-nativists might assume— that there's nothing special about language—I'm assuming there's something special about language, but that it's a variation on a theme. 4:40:13 AM    comment []