As such, they've set up an interesting choice for Madisonians. If voters think that George Bush is a great president and that Tammy Baldwin is a rotten member of Congress, they will definitely want to back the State Journal's slate of candidates.This is a very interesting time....
The Project for Excellence in Journalism, in its invaluable report on the state of the news media today, puts it this way: "If older media sectors focus on profit-taking and stock price, they may do so at the expense of building the new technologies that are vital to the future. There are signs that that may be occurring."Perhaps this local example is related?
Newspapers in 2004, for instance, increased their profits at double the rate (8%) that their revenues grew (less than 4%), according to the Newspaper Association of America, a distinct sign of profit-taking. The industry remains highly profitable. Margins averaged 22.9% in 2004, according to the analyst Lauren Fine, and are expected to rise in 2005. The investment in online publications, though, where the size of the profits is still fairly modest, remains by most evidence cautious.
Erica Sadun posts a useful discussion of the different broadcast standards and your Mac (along with some PC tips as well).
The state of Colorado is under assault. Opponents of Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) are waging a well coordinated but misleading attack on Colorado’s reputation. This attack takes the form of a number of rankings and statistics that purport to show that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights has decimated Colorado. These rankings and statistics are based on the assumption that if Colorado ranks poorly on things like the adequacy of prenatal care and education spending, then Colorado is failing to adequately care for and educate its citizens, and that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights must be to blame. A closer look at the attacks shows that they fail to prove that the amount a state spends on health care and education determines quality, and they also fail to tell the whole truth about the rankings and statistics of the state of Colorado.
I would say the argument went a little better for Grokster than I would have expected it to. Not to the point where I'd actually predict victory for them, but to my mind at least, the questions Grokster got were not as difficult as those MGM got. The big issue that the Justices were wrestling with, it seemed to me, is what the standard ought to be for deciding whether services like Grokster can be secondarily liable for their users' copyright infringement. The Justices did not sound especially satisfied with either MGM's or the government's answers to this question.
Xeni:
Musician and artist David Byrne, known most widely as co-founder of the Talking Heads, has just launched an internet radio station that streams the music he digs. I spoke with Mr. Byrne earlier today about the project for NPR's "Day to Day." Part of the interview will be included in a segment airing on the show tomorrow about filesharing and cultural change -- but here are more details about the radio project.
Both versions of the Tar Heels were on display Sunday afternoon when North Carolina held off an outmanned Wisconsin team 88-82. North Carolina was so dazzling offensively it resembled an NBA team; unfortunately, it was so detached on defense, it did the same. The Tar Heels were so nonchalant, they left Wisconsin - Wisconsin - looking like Phi Slamma Jamma.
via isen.com
Under the [three bills pending before the Florida Legislature], if the phone or cable companies don't offer a proposal, the cities can go ahead with their own, but only after doing a feasibility study and asking residents to vote on the project at least once — twice if bonds would be used to finance it.That would take anywhere from two to four years, one group says.
"No city would look at that process and say, 'Yeah! We're going to go down that road,' " said Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, which represents cities that own utilities
Amazon.com has one potentially big advantage over its rival online retailers: It knows things about you that you may not know yourself.Though plenty of companies have detailed systems for tracking customer habits, both critics and boosters say Amazon is the trailblazer, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. It even received a patent recently on technology aimed at tracking information about the people for whom its customers buy gifts.
Follow the conversation on Sunday's Wisconsin Badger's loss to UNC:
"He's almost unstoppable and even knocked down some jump shots today," Wilkinson said. "He just played amazingly all over the floor. He did a good job on the boards, everything. He's just all over."
May said before the game that Rashad McCants had said of Wilkinson: "There's no way he'll be able to guard you. He's too little."
Minnesota Public Radio's The Current is available online here.
In any other industry, a product that lost 1 percent of market share for two decades — only to then double or triple that rate of decline — would be declared dead. The manufacturer would discontinue it and rush out a replacement product more in line with the desires of the marketplace. So, let's finally come out and say: Newspapers are dead. They will never come back. By the end of this decade, the newspaper industry will suffer the same death rate — 90-plus percent — that every other industry experiences when run over by a technology revolution.The transition will surely be interesting....
Then she threw herself a going-away bash at the Hilton hotel. "The first two-thirds of my life were devoted to the world," she told 800 friends as they enjoyed music from two orchestras and tucked into caviar, coquille of seafood and fine wines. "The last third will be devoted to my soul." It was Oct. 30, 1989, her 60th birthday.
Mark Cuban, in a lengthy post on the landmark MGM vs. Grokster case discloses his financial support for the EFF (our rights - vs. the Hollywood Rent Seekers).
Useful Background at www.outragedmoderates.org
Growing numbers of foreign patients, including uninsured Americans, are going to India for medical treatment. Proponents say the health care is comparable to much that is available in the United States, and at a far lower cost.
If James Naismith had been around to witness Wisconsin's 65-56 region semifinal victory over North Carolina State on Friday night, he might have wished he had invented something other than basketball.
Explaining his team's strategy for coping with Hodge, Ryan said: "You show respect, and then you play. Make him go right a little bit. Make him go left a little bit. I really liked our help defense. We kept him from getting to the rim."
This was supposed to have been a renaissance for college basketball in the Triangle, and for a week it was just that, a time when once again all three of its major men's basketball teams -- Duke, N.C. State and North Carolina -- were playing deep into the NCAA Tournament. For Duke and State, those sweet few days ended with a thud Friday night, courtesy of two methodical, strong, defensive-minded Big Ten teams.
The US government proved that Microsoft possessed, and illegally exploited, monopoly power in the "antitrust case of the century", the six-year action that ended in July 2004. The Final Judgment allowed Microsoft to remain whole, but imposed conditions that permit rival software makers to tuck their products into its Windows operating system. Anti-Microsoft groups were outraged; a spokesman for one said: "This decision represents the failure of antitrust laws in the high-tech industry...An unrestrained monopolist in the most vibrant sector of the economy cannot be good for America." The critics were right: the Government's remedies have had little impact. Yet today customers are flocking to Microsoft's competitors. Hammered on multiple fronts by opportunistic rivals, the high-flying starship of the PC Age has stalled, and many wonder if it will now crash and burn..
Russ Feingold continues his travels in preparation (?) for a 2008 run for president - wispolitics.
The lobby of the Kalahari Waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells at check-in time on a recent Saturday afternoon was equal parts Marx Brothers anarchy, Andy Hardy freckles and "Dude, Where's My Car?" goofiness. Just as the line to the front desk began moving, five revelers barely into their teens hijacked an empty luggage rack, and with one pushing and four aboard, raced, shrieking, around the lobby, which seemed roughly the size of a par-three nine-hole golf course.
I quickly cruised the lobby in search of my friend Julia, a fine-arts administrator who did not want her last name used because she was embarrassed even to be seen in the Dells. Not finding her, I went back outside and ran into a traffic jam. The gridlock consisted mostly of two types of vehicles trying to get near this hostelry, which has a 125,000-square-foot indoor water park, the largest in the country. On the one hand were the monster-size recreational vehicles, which disgorged the incoming families. Going up against them were teenagers revving the engines of a score of pizza-delivery cars, lined up like impatient taxi drivers at the airport as they waited to drop off their wares and rush back for more.
In adding service to Denver, Northwest is creating another direct challenge to Midwest Airlines, which is owned by Oak Creek-based Midwest Air Group Inc. Northwest in February added daily service to Pittsburgh and Toronto, destinations also served by Midwest Airlines.Note that Northwest is using cramped regional jets, which, I don't believe will be much of a problem for Midwest to compete with.
Community activists upset with the Wisconsin State Journal for including a seat on an advisory panel with a $25,000 sponsorship package for a new business journal took their protest to the newspaper offices this morning.Interesting to see this surface in the State Journal's sister publication, the Capital Times. Both own and operate Capital Newspapers, a joint operating company where its monopoly is protected by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. Background on the 1970 Act: Clusty. Somewhat related, Jay Rosen is calling for the de-certification of the press. The Economist (paid link) also jumps in:
State Journal Publisher Jim Hopson and Editor Ellen Foley met with a half-dozen activists from nonprofit organizations. Both emphatically denied that access to the State Journal is for sale.
"We do not sell access to the State Journal," Hopson said. "We give it away freely."
Behind all this lies a shift in the balance of power in the news business. Power is moving away from old-fashioned networks and newspapers; it is swinging towards, on the one hand, smaller news providers (in the case of blogs, towards individuals) and, on the other, to the institutions of government, which have got into the business of providing news more or less directly. Eventually, perhaps, the new world of blogs will provide as much public scrutiny as newspapers and broadcasters once did. But for the moment the shifting balance of power is helping the government behemoth.
The death of Sun Hudson - a 6-month-old with a fatal genetic disorder who was taken off life support against his mother's wishes in a Texas hospital last week - adds some depth to the emotional debate over the fate of Terri Schiavo. The MSM are hanging on every twist and turn in the Schiavo case, and protesters have descended on Florida to denounce what they call "murder."
Kevin Werbach muses on a recent anti-consumer broadband FCC decision that will prolong our slow broadband service....
The FCC reached a decision this week that could effectively end broadband service as we know it. The order hasn't officially come out yet, but the result was leaked.The FCC granted a petition by BellSouth to pre-empt state regulators from requiring "naked DSL." The procedural aspects are convoluted, so the effect of that action may not be clear. Here's what the FCC is saying. The local phone companies (and, although the ruling doesn't specifically cover them, cable companies) are free to force customers to buy pay for phone service in order to get broadband. Whether or not you use the phone company's voice service is immaterial -- you have to pay for it. Although there are a few telcos willing to sell DSL as a stand-alone service (notably Qwest), one wonders if they will continue to do so.
Frank Lasee launched a blog dedicated to TABOR. Flaw: no RSS feed....
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, like the Long Tail, is about finding ways to efficiently address sub-economic markets. In this case, Prahalad is talking about how to sell goods and services to the world's 4 billion poor, for mutual benefit.
In yet another sign of growing support for common sense election reform, the office of Senator Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) today released a poll indicating 70% of Wisconsin municipal clerks surveyed support a photo ID requirement at the polls.129 clerks responded to the survey, and 90 support photo ID at the polls. When coupled with a recent survey released in February by the Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) that shows 84.3% of likely voters support photo ID, the head of RPW said it is time for Governor James E. Doyle to stop ignoring the will of the people and take action in support of this common-sense election reform.
Every company we've spoken to already has somebody working on this," said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, or WOMMA. "It's called different things -- viral, buzz, customer satisfaction. But in the four months since we started, we've got 60 corporate members, and 3,000 people on our mailing list."This is not something that can be manufactured - though many will try. Rather, it's only successful when spontaneous and genuine....
Call it what you like, marketers of all kinds have been increasingly looking for ways to take advantage of the speed at which information moves today and the power that can come from people passing on their impressions, recommendations or referrals of products or services.
Vehicles with diesel engines typically get 25 to 30 percent more miles to the gallon than their gasoline counterparts, according to Charlie Freese, executive engineering director at GM Powertrain. Freese said the many factors that make diesel engines more efficient include operating unthrottled and more efficient oxidizing of fuel. Diesel engines also have a higher compression ratio, and the heavier diesel fuel has a higher energy density, according to Freese
As Calatrava projects go, this one is unusually subdued at night. His buildings and bridges in Spain, many of which I saw on a Calatrava-related odyssey in 2001, are beautifully lighted, sometimes theatrically so. His City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, for example, becomes a charismatic town square at night, with an eyeball-shaped planetarium that gives off a lantern-like glow and a museum whose white ribcage looks even more dramatic than in the daytime. Calatrava himself designed the dramatic lighting for his cabled Alamillo Bridge in Seville (1992), its leaning-harp profile a forerunner of our own (well-lighted) 6th St. Viaduct, designed by Kahler Slater Architects.
Because the trusted computing base is also used to make digital rights management systems more secure, this will give content providers a lot more control over what we can do with music, movies and books that we have bought from them.Slashdot discussion.
We high-tech moderns like to think we have little connection to the past, but as I pondered the new online collaborations, I couldn’t help thinking that we could benefit from considering one of the greatest literary collaborations in history, the King James Bible.
Scott Simon takes a fascinating look at the singles scene at Home Depot. Evidently, some of these stores have hosted weddings...
I find the conversation about Government video news releases much ado about nothing. How is this different than a media organization reprinting a press release - which happens all the time? The problem is not completely with the government, rather, it's publishers who don't bother to look into these releases and determine if there is another angle, or even a story worth spending time on, rather than just hitting the "print" button, as it were.
Wisely, GM has decided to support audio line-ins from any portable music device, starting this fall in a handfull of models.
"I have to pay for a service I'm never using," he said.Local telco provider TDS Metro has the same policy: you must purchase legacy phone service with dsl internet access.He has no choice. His telephone company, SBC Communications, will not sell him high-speed Internet access unless he buys the phone service, too. That puts him in the same bind as many people around the country who want high-speed, or broadband, Internet access but no longer need a conventional telephone. Right now, their phone companies tend to have a "take it or leave it" attitude.
To get inside the mind of the Great White shark, Fabien Cousteau is getting inside its body. Not such a strange endeavor, perhaps, for a third-generation oceanographer who was practically born with fins. “I did my first dive on my fourth birthday,” says Cousteau. “My father found me on the bottom of the pool buddy-breathing — a pretty advanced technique for sharing an oxygen tank — with a family friend.”
Since then, Cousteau has hardly surfaced for air. Following in the wake of his famous grandfather Jacques and father Jean-Michel, Fabien has made the oceans his second home. “I went along on their expeditions during every school break,” he says. “I’d scrub the hulls, paint the rails, do whatever needed to be done — and dive. For me, that was vacation. I loved it.”
The new tool will allow advertisers to buy not just keywords but also the demographics of the person searching on those keywords.This means that MSN, Hotmail and other Microsoft property users search & click data is aggregated, then sold to advertisers.
MSN can do that most effectively when the search is conducted by a registered user who has already provided some personal details to the site. MSN attracts more than 380 million unique users worldwide per month.
That's why she is troubled by a rule that will go into effect at her company next January. Trapp-Dietz and other smokers who work at Northwestern Mutual - regardless of whether they light up at home or outside the building at work - will pay an extra $25 a month for health insurance coverage.These type of disincentives are already in play if one purchases other benefit type products such as life insurance.
Trapp-Dietz said considers the fee an invasion of her private life.
"I know I have to quit, and I really want to. But I don't like being told to by my employer," she said.
Tim Oren: trust, transactions, and the risks to MSM bundling as a business model. Interesting reading. Alan Mutter on the qualitative implications of newspaper profits growing at a faster rate than revenue growth (something is being squeezed).
Fascinating story: Sony dumped a fully completed Fiona Apple album. The music is available via bittorrent.
At least 82 felons voted illegally in the presidential election Nov. 2 in Milwaukee, though the total is likely far higher, a new computer analysis by the Journal Sentinel has found.Borowski also mentions a 2003 change in Wisconsin's public records law that hinders this investigation. What about Madison?
Indeed, there are more than 600 potential matches between felons on probation and parole and names and middle initials of people who voted in the city. But a full analysis could not be completed by the newspaper because of a 2003 state law that bars access to birth dates of voters.
The newspaper, though, was able to do a partial analysis by combining several computer databases to capture birth dates for about 39% of those who voted in the November election.
Roger McNamee offers up some useful advice on knowing when to fold & move on.
Springfield's system cost 70K to setup, according to Glenn Fleishman. Meanwhile, fighting municipal broadband on the one hand, SBC and Alltel are seeking government subsidies with the other.
On the NPR program "Day to Day" today, I report on Beatallica, the Milwaukee-based parody band known for Metallica-infused covers of Beatles songs. As reported previously here on Boing Boing, Sony Music accused them of violating copyright laws, demanded that their webmaster pay "unspecified damages," and forced the band's ISP to shut down their website.
Alan Greenspan has called for a consumption tax and President Bush has toyed with the related idea of a national sales tax. These proposals have some ideal economic properties but the politics don't work. Consumption taxes are largely invisible; you don't see what you pay on a yearly tax return but, rather, it is absorbed in the price of goods. Not surprisingly, Western European countries have both consumption taxes and high rates of overall taxation. Flat taxes bring some benefits but wouldn't drastically lower the costs of our tax code; the biggest difficulty in filing your return is calculating your income.I recommend starting on the expenditure side. Let's gradually freeze Social Security benefits in real terms, introduce more market incentives to health care, redo the Medicare prescription-drug bill, and cut discretionary government spending. We should admit more revenue-positive immigrants as well and stop subsidizing the defense of Western Europeans.
"Right now, the Midwest is awash with old, decrepit manufacturing plants," Mautner said in an interview. "Some of these are factories with century-old equipment, and they’ve seen few improvements over the years. At the same time, China is building all new facilities, with all new equipment, and they’re consuming about half of the world’s oil, and half of the world’s steel and concrete."U.S. companies can’t stop China’s industrial revolution, but they can shield themselves from it a little, Mautner said.
Technorati is now tracking over 7.8 million weblogs, and 937 million links. That's just about double the number of weblogs tracked in October 2004. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every 5 months. It has already done so at this pace four times, which means that in the last 20 months, the blogosphere has increased in size by over 16 times.Related: Katherine Seelye: Can Papers end the Free Ride Online?
Producers of a diesel alternative made from old vegetable oil want to build a network of stations to sell the fuel to motorists. But many find it tough to convince local regulators to approve their efforts. By Mark Baard
Freeculture.org sponsored blogshine Sunday, a day when news organizations run stories and editorials in support of public access to government information.
The internet has substantially improved citizen's ability to see who is funding elected officials directly and indirectly.
The Madison City Clerk conveniently posts campaign finance information on their website. I took a quick look at PAC (political action committee) spending on school board races and found this:
Madison School Related PAC's:
Wisconsin has a number of perspectives on this, from Feingold to Sensenbrenner to Doyle:
Closer to home, should Madison School Board candidates accept funds from special interests?
Current Board Member Bill Clingan (Candidate for Seat 6 in the April, 2005 election) chairs the Board's Human Resources Committee which is currently negotiating a new contract with Madison Teachers. This issue was discussed at the recent Northside PTA candidate forum. Carol Carstensen, when asked for a yes or no answer to whether Madison Teachers should spend thousands of dollars to protect incumbents, answered no according to Lee Sensenbrenner. In the same article, Bill Clingan endorsed the rights of PAC's and is proud to have their support. I did not find any PAC contributions to Lawrie Kobza's campaign (pdf); Bill Clingan's opponent or Larry Winkler (pdf) who is running against Carol Carstensen. I'll update this information as additional filings (later in March) occur.
Background Links:
The District has a policy on Board Member's public responsibilities (1540).
Excellent national campaign finance information: www.opensecrets.org
State political information: www.wispolitics.com
In closing, exercise your right to know. Check out these sites and most importantly, vote on April 5, 2005.
We often list all the problems in society, and the politicians would make you believe that they're going to solve all those problems.
Generally, I'd say it goes the other way. Businesses solve a lot of the world's problems. The next big energy breakthrough will happen through a business.
The next big environmental breakthrough similarly could happen through a business. Medicine has been advanced through business. It turns out that it's the businesspeople that tend to be the ones who solve all this stuff.
In the United States, your ballot is secret, but almost everything else about an election is part of the public record: Who voted and at what ward. Where they live. How old they are. Even what number they were in line.
Until recently, that is.
At least in Wisconsin, where a 2003 change in state law put the birth dates of voters off limits to the public, making it nearly impossible to determine whether someone voted twice, a felon voted improperly, or someone voted as a dead person.
And in Milwaukee, where officials have denied access - for now - to nearly all information about the Nov. 2 election, citing an ongoing local-federal investigation into possible voter fraud.
The irony: The investigation was started only after the Journal Sentinel revealed a host of problems about the election - including 7,000 votes that are unaccounted for - by examining information it obtained through open records requests.
New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and more recently, Blink, spoke a the UW Wednesday evening. Here's an excerpt of his talk [Quicktime video | mp3] This was an interesting evening.
Pierce said she felt an uneasy twinge in her stomach as she began to flip the pages. A dozen former addresses were listed, along with neighbors and their phone numbers. Almost 20 people were listed as relatives -- and their neighbors were listed, too. There were cars she supposedly owned, businesses she supposedly worked for.But the more closely she looked, the more alarmed she became: The report was littered with mistakes.
ChoicePoint, the now embattled database giant, aggregates data from hundreds of sources on millions of Americans. The reports are then sold to thousands of companies and government agencies that want to know more about their clients, customers, or employees.
Steve Rubel summarizes Walt Mossberg's comments on Google's AutoLink/Adlink toolbar.
Props to the folks at sxsw who posted a 2.6GB torrent file with 750+ mp3's from bands performing at the Austin conference the next few weeks.
Greenspun on the recent Harvard "admissions hacking" controversy. He makes some very useful points.
The Asthma & Allergy Foundation released their second annual "US Asthma Capitals". Madison is 26th.
One of the main stumbling blocks in the American health care system, many experts say, is the inefficient use of computer technology to manage medical records.
Now, in Santa Barbara County, a network of hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and doctors is pioneering new technology that will allow medical professionals with different computer systems to share clinical information. The initiative may well be a first step toward the creation of a national patient-care data bank.
Well done! Check it out and send the link around.
Patrick Marley does a nice bit of work:
A computer network consultant who evaluated bids for a $116 million state project ended his government work in the midst of final contract negotiations to work for SBC - the firm that had landed the huge deal two months earlier.
NPR's All Songs Considered webcast a live Wilco concert from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 club. Listen to the concert here.
Warren Buffett has 21.4 billion in forward foreign exchange contracts.
UPDATE: Buffett's recent letter to his shareholders.
Michael Levy takes a fascinating look at John Coltrane's Giant Steps. A great compliment to Elizabeth Van Ness's question: Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New MBA?
Still more, Ms. Daley, the U.S.C. Cinema-Television dean, argues that to generalize such skills has become integral to the film school's mission. More than 60 academic courses at U.S.C. now require students to create term papers and projects that use video, sound and Internet components - and for Ms. Daley, it's not enough. "If I had my way, our multimedia literacy honors program would be required of every student in the university," she said.
Frank Rich nails it:
What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.Even NPR. I woke up the other morning at 6 and Morning Edition's lead story was Martha Stewart (not Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, the dollar's ongoing meltdown, or any of a number of domestic issues).
Robert O'Harrow, Jr digs further into the Choicepoint mess:
But the man's call last fall was different, according to a detective's description of the encounter and testimony presented in a later court hearing. Unknown to ChoicePoint, the caller was not Garrett, an actor in the Los Angeles area. Police said he was a con artist involved in a vast identity-theft scam that succeeded in making off with records of at least 145,000 people. The real Garrett was just another victim.Here's how the scam worked.The imposter's attempt to gain access to even more files would not only expose the scam, but spark a national outrage and congressional hearings over whether the nation's growing commercial data industry is doing enough to guard personal information.
Interesting look at JC Penney's new marketing strategy.
Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett on Thursday became the first person to fly around the world solo without stopping or refueling — 67 hours and 23,000 miles after taking off in his spindly-looking, experimental jet.
Household income in the Milwaukee area remained below national and regional averages through 2003, according to figures released Thursday, the result of an economy battered by recession and changes in how the nation does business.
"Many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth - particularly if one were designing a system from scratch - because a consumption tax is likely to favor saving and capital formation," Mr. Greenspan said.But the Fed chairman warned that shifting to a new system would raise difficult "transition issues," and he cautioned against "going for purity" in any kind of tax overhaul.
Broadband is the perfect example. The private market has failed the US so far. At the beginning, we led the world in broadband deployment. But by 2004, we ranked an embarrassing 13th. There are many places, like Philadelphia, where service is lacking. And there are many places, like San Francisco, where competition is lacking. The result of the duopoly that currently defines "competition" is that prices and service suck. We're the world's leader in Internet technology - except that we're not.
Dave breaks some news: a long time Microsoft Windows architect leaves Redmond for Google. Lucovsky has some useful things to say.
Quite a bit of conversation over at www.schoolinfosystem.org Johnny Winston, Jr. adds some interesting notes on Eugene Parks.
A Texas legislator has filed a massive telecommunications bill in Austin this session that, in part, bans Texas cities from participating in wireless information networks. SBC Communications said cities should be allowed to offer wireless Internet access in public places, such as parks and libraries. But a company spokesman said they should not directly compete with private enterprises by providing services to residents and businesses.SBC is our local monopoly telco provider.
Computer generated advertising is.... funny. Here's a screen shot of a Google Adsense series of advertisements, including an Ebay offer: Chief Executive Officers: Huge Selection of New & Used on one of my blog entries. Maybe this is the right approach to the problem of severely overpaid CEO's, auction them off on ebay....
Pearl and Nick (www.wishoops.net) have started their WIAA Boys Basketball tournament coverage with some predictions. Check it out.
Paul Allen's Charter Communications released their most recent quarterly results today.
Bruce Schneier on the recent choicepoint fiasco (and the company's spin).
Telus began blocking selected Internet connection to home computers. The blocking is invisible to most users, but all it takes is a cruise around message boards frequented by tech-savvy users–or a chat with a local geek–to know that Telus high-speed service isn’t what it used to be . . . Blocked ports include those used to listen for incoming email, FTP (file transfer), Telnet (remote login), and Internet Relay Chat client traffic, as well as incoming World Wide Web connections. Users can access other servers providing those services, but cannot provide them from their own computers. In other words, a Telus customer can be a client, but not a server.I emailed Mayor Dave seeking to insure that Madison's forthcoming WiFi service will be fully, 2-way...
Ben Mcconnell buys a Powerbook on Michigan Avenue and blogs about the "experiential" marketing...
Great film, check it out:
An elite group of champion skiers, mountain climbers and European mountaineers become the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, America's only mountain and winter warfare fighting unit. From the intensive training atop the Colorado Rockies to the spectacular night climb of Italy's Riva Ridge -- where the 10th scored their biggest victory against Hitler's troops -- the exploits of this famous division are scrupulously chronicled.
