Monday, December 19, 2005

Check it out: TBL has a blog. 11:58:07 PM    comment []

I'll have to check with my manager. [snip] Source: The White House Did you catch that? We didn't try to get the law changed because certain people in Congress told us we'd fail. Oh, and this is no biggie because a shift supervisor plays the role of a federal magistrate. Comedy gold! [Emergent Chaos] See also: Legal Analysis of the Wiretaps. One of the really cool things about blogs is that very smart, knowledgeable people can offer up their opinions on topics of the moment. In this case, it's Orin Kerr and Daniel Solove offering up extended legal analyses of the wiretaps. (Well, extended from the lay perspective, anyway.) Professor Kerr has posted "Legal Analysis of the NSA Domestic Surveillance Program" and Professor Solove, "Beyond His Power: Bush's Authorization of Warrantless NSA Surveillance." 11:51:08 PM    comment []

Emma Brockes interview with Woody Allen. There are oases of comedy, Woody Allen tells Emma Brockes, but when it's all over, the news is bad. [Guardian Unlimited] 11:50:27 PM    comment []

Big controversy over Little Red Book / "DHS visits student" story.   Librarians, reporters, and bloggers are today debating whether this story about a student visited by DHS agents over a famous book of Mao Tse-Tung quotes is real or hoax. Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, who filed the article, maintains it is "is real and factual to the extent [he] reported." But Jessamyn West of the American Library Association says, "The jury is still out... parts of the newspaper story don't add up." Link to updated Boing Boing post with details. [Boing Boing] See also: DHS agents visit student over Little Red Book - HOAX DEBATE 11:47:07 PM    comment []

Bruce Schneier: Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else -- Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included -- is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security -- both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage -- as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees. [Emphasis added.] 1:23:20 PM    comment []

Three Benton Headlines: TEN THINGS WRONG WITH TELEVISION [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John M. Higgins] Linda Ellerbee asked kids what's wrong with television. What did they say? 1) Too many commercials. 2) Local TV news that is too violent. RURAL LIVING, BUT WITH ACCESS TO HIGH-SPEED INTERNET SERVICE [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katie Zezima] Gov. John E. Baldacci is leading an initiative to bring wireless Internet service to 90 percent of Maine communities that meet a population threshold (five people per square mile) by 2010. Gov Baldacci, who announced the initiative, Connect Maine, last January, is also pledging universal cellphone coverage by 2008. Part of Mr. Baldacci's inspiration for the project came from his own experience driving around the state and losing cellphone coverage, said Kurt Adams, counsel to Gov Baldacci. Details are still being worked out. The state has nearly completed a program mapping out cellphone and broadband dead zones, and a task force of telecommunications company representatives, business owners and others will deliver recommendations to Gov Baldacci by the end of the month. While the price of outfitting Maine with broadband service is still being determined, it will cost roughly $55 million to build enough cell towers to cover the state, Mr. Adams said. Phone and cable companies have not expanded broadband service outside the state's large towns because they see no profit from such an investment; large areas still lack cable television service altogether. The same is true with cellular towers; coverage has been difficult because the state's 1.2 million residents are widely dispersed, and DSL, the phone companies' broadband technology, requires users to be within about three miles of a central office. Rather than underwrite the entire effort, the state will most likely use a combination of measures that could include tax incentives, direct subsidies to companies and grants to municipalities, those involved with state technology efforts said. The state is also exploring use of the federal government's Universal Service Fund to help pay for the effort. HIGH-SPEED INTERNET OVER POWER LINES COULD SERVE MILLIONS [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dionne Searcey dionne.searcey@wsj.com and Rebecca Smith] Current Communications Group LLC and TXU Electric Delivery plan to offer high speed Internet access over electric power lines to over two million customers in Texas by the end of 2006. Current's rollout to a wide swath of customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and elsewhere in Texas is a sign that the technology is more than a fad. The service will be offered in TXU's traditional utility territory in North Texas, which has overlap with areas now served by Time Warner and Charter Communications as well as AT&T and Verizon Communications, which are spending billions of dollars to upgrade their networks with fiber. Under the terms of the agreement, TXU, the biggest utility company in Texas, will sign a 10-year contract for $150 million to use Current's technology to get instantaneous alerts about outages and to gather information about its electrical system. The technology eventually could be used to read meters and even to remotely shut off or turn on power, eliminating utility jobs. There are regulatory hurdles since the transmission and distribution systems that form the backbone are regulated assets and utilities must seek approval to use them in this new way. Texas became the first state this year to pass a law permitting utility holding companies to set up separate concerns, funded with shareholder dollars, that would make the investments and reap the rewards, insulating utility customers from a possible costly boondoggle. But in most states, utilities would be expected to share profits or savings with rate payers, reducing incentive for utilities to pursue a broadband strategy. Top officials at the Federal Communications Commission have expressed support for such power-line services because they could expand the availability of high-speed Internet access to rural communities that the big providers ignore because of the cost of establishing service in areas with low concentrations of users. In suburban Washington, D.C., Current has set up a home to conduct demonstrations of its power-line broadband. Among the 5,000 people who have visited include FCC chairman Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman Michael Powell, Richard Russell, technology adviser at the White House and members of Congress. (I thought there was some inherent problem with delivering Net access over power lines in the United States -- some difference with, say, England. Maybe I'll have a chance to look at this later, or maybe someone will tell me. Anyone know this?) 11:23:04 AM    comment []

Three from BNA News: DUTCH SUPREME CT AGREES TO WITHDRAWAL OF SCIENTOLOGY CASE The Dutch Supreme Court has agreed to a Scientology motion to withdraw an appeal of an earlier decision involving a suit against the XS4All ISP. The case began ten years ago as the Church of Scientology sued the ISP for hosting certain content. The ISP won successive appeals of the case. Coverage at [Constitutional Code] THE SEARCH FOR NET NEUTRALITY My weekly Law Bytes column examines the growing trend toward a two-tiered Internet, which upends the longstanding principle of network neutrality under which ISPs treat all data equally. The column, which suggests that legal protection for network neutrality may be needed, points to a wide range of examples involving packet preferencing, content blocking, traffic shaping, and public musings about premium charges for faster content downloads. Toronto Star version Freely available version HACKERS EXPLOIT FIRST XBOX 360 CRACKS Only weeks after the introduction of the Xbox 360, hackers appear to have cracked their way into the software that runs the Microsoft game console. A group called "Team PI Coder" claims to have found a way to extract the source files of Xbox 360 games as they get loaded onto the console. 10:22:56 AM    comment []