Friday, September 03, 2004

the declaration of independence, the constitution, and now this: yet another inspiration from philadelphia. Philadelphia is considering adding WiFi boxes to all street lights, making the whole city WiFi alive. What I like best about this idea is how the link to street lights suggests how we should think about this resource: (1) Is it free? No, just as street lighting costs money, it will cost money to put Wifi boxes on street lighting. (2) Is it free. Yes, like lighted streets, and air conditioned city hall, you won't have to pay to enjoy the resource. (3) So it is free and not free: yes, as all great public resources are. And as with all great public resources, this will benefit Philadelphia in ways we cannot begin to imagine. Let the city provide a platform, and watch the entrepreneurs find a million ways to make it valuable. Did anyone have any clue about all the ways the GPS would be used once Ronald Reagan set it free? [Lessig Blog] (Lessig also offers his thanks to last month's guest bloggers, Congressman Boucher, Judge Posner and Professor Wu.) 8:24:52 PM    comment []

Code Pink to Pete Wilson: No good deed goes unpunished. How did the lone protester who interrupted President Bush's speech get such a good seat in Madison Square Garden Thursday night (about 50 feet from Bush and just three rows behind his California campaign chair Gerald Parsky)? Former California Gov. Pete Wilson gave it to her, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. [Salon.com] 8:17:26 PM    comment []

Txting and radio at the Republican convention. Reason reports on smartmob practices at the Republican National Convention. Julian Sanchez relates stories of mistaken or overenthusiastic information, estimating that roughly half of the protestors' text messages were accurate. Jesse Walker notes an LA Times story about protestors setting... [Smart Mobs] 8:10:34 PM    comment []

Company that claims streaming-video patents makes new offer to colleges (AP) Some colleges, as well as education and technology groups, say Acacia's claims are invalid and worry that they could threaten college educational activities. In July, Acacia lost a key preliminary ruling in a similar dispute with adult entertainment Web sites, but the company insists its patent claims remain strong. Acacia now says it has responded to college concerns with a more generous licensing proposal. The arrangement, detailed in a letter dated Thursday, would exempt colleges from paying royalties on streaming video that produces no income. Colleges with small distance-learning programs could be exempted, and the minimum royalty for larger colleges could be as low as $1,000 annually. We are looking to be reasonable business people, said Acacia executive vice president and general counsel Rob Berman. But, he said colleges, which reap hundreds of millions of dollars from licenses on patents they develop, still have an obligation to sign on or stop using streaming video. To me it is incomprehensible how they could expect others to respect their intellectual properties while ignoring others', he said. Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education, which is advising colleges on the matter, said: For reasons unbeknownst to us, Acacia has reviewed its position and has adopted a much-welcomed, more conciliatory position. However, he said ACE still advises colleges not to sign licensing deals pending an analysis of Acacia's claims. 10:39:23 AM    comment []

Claim: RNC guards, cops overreacted with Moore on Monday. On Jim Romenesko's MediaNews [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 6:54:33 AM    comment []

Alarming Garden security breaches, by David Epstein (NY Daily News). On the eve of President Bush's address to the nation, the Daily News has uncovered alarming breaches in security at the Republican National Convention. The News learned yesterday that delegates and guests were freely handing out unused passes. A News reporter investigated - and within five hours he was inside Madison Square Garden to catch Vice President Cheney's speech. Even more shocking, the pass was obtained without anyone asking for or checking on the reporter's identity. The breach came after three security incidents in three days. So it should have been near impossible to slip past the thousands of cops and federal agents inside and outside the Garden. But it was all too easy. The generic credentials don't have the user's name, and as for a photo, forget about it. In short, there was nothing to prevent anyone, from protester to hardened criminal, from getting inside the Garden - though we were checked for weapons. 6:53:58 AM    comment []

The Digital Hoards. We Are Becoming Digital Pack Rats  "Personal computers -- our jukeboxes, photo labs, accountants and film studios -- are becoming the proverbial junk drawer, scattered with scads of must-have information. Sister devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players and digital video recorders overflow with often barely a bite of spare storage. The ravenous nature of society coupled with the quest for convenience has spawned a nation of digital pack rats, eager to possess every gigabyte of media they can download, and too greedy -- or lazy -- to let it go.... One's desk might be clean and tidy, but countless computer desktops have become chaotic. 'It's like an infinite attic, and we're filling it,' said Peter Lyman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems. 'People are feeling overwhelmed and trying to find coping strategies.' " [The Indianapolis Star, via Library Link of the Day] Heh - good timing! I just wrote about the rise of the personal server as part of my "Product Pipeline" column for the next issue of netConnect. The day after I turned it in, I bought a 1GB SD card for my Treo because I can't carry around enough ones and zeroes on my current 512MB version. Storage storage everywhere, and not a drop to drink! I paid a little under $100 for the new card, a Gigabyte of portable storage the size of a postage stamp! Next year, terabytes will be affordable. To quote Roy Tennant, "Storage is officially cheaper than dirt." [The Shifted Librarian] 6:50:06 AM    comment []

The Credo of the Canberra Planners, as formulated by Daniel Nolan. We believe in a mind-independent, metaphysically real world, and the correspondence theory of truth. We believe in the reality of the past, and of the future, and we are four-dimensionalists (or at least three-plus-one dimensionalists) about spacetime  . . . We are Humean about value, but not about causation. We believe in the reality of properties and relations (though we are agnostic about whether they are universals, tropes or special sets). We believe in unrestricted mereological composition, and believe in the existence of sets. We believe in possible worlds (though we admit puzzlement about their nature). We believe in morals, and colours, and all manner of "secondary qualities". We are consequentialists, but of all shades, and with a variety of meta-ethical justifications.  . . . We look for inter-theoretic reductions, And the supervenience of all on the microphysical, Amen. 6:49:47 AM    comment []

Denying the Troops a Secret Ballot. The plan allowing members of the military to vote this year by fax or e-mail has far too many problems, starting with the contractor running it, for it to be reliable. [The New York Times > Opinion] 6:45:02 AM    comment []