Drucker on Information Scarcity

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Peter Drucker:

WSJ: You also said the scarcity axiom was becoming obsolete. Do you mean the idea that things have value only insofar as they’re limited in supply?
Dr. Drucker: What I mean is that the scarcity axiom does not pertain to information. Let me give you two examples, one where they understand this and one where they don’t. I will not give company names.
There is the company that gave you the map and driving direction you used to get from the Los Angeles airport to my home; you go to the Internet, and they don’t charge a penny. They make their money from advertising, which you have to look at to get these directions. They understand that the scarcity axiom does not apply to information because they can keep giving away information and receive more revenue in another way.
On the other hand, there is a major newspaper, one I am very fond of, which believes in selling subscriptions to the online edition of the paper, which is a total misunderstanding. It should be given away to create a larger subscription base.
This first company understands information, the second one has yet to learn.

via Doc

How To Get Faster Municipal Service from Incumbents

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How To Get Faster Municipal Service from Incumbents:

“Lompoc, Calif., may have three options for broadband, accidentally: The city is at the center of this long and fair look at why municipal wireless is becoming a widespread phenomenon, and the reporter covers the warts and fair skin equally. But there’s a gem in this article, because it explains how any smaller town could get its service upgraded by incumbents at no expense. First, the mayor or city manager along with the council announces a surprise plan to offer subsidized or free wireless throughout the town with a private contractor handling cost and risk. Second, they fight back attacks by the incumbents to scotch the plan in the media or through special elections. Third, the incumbents commit upgrade resources to serve the town. Fourth, the town decides not to build, and enjoys its 21st-century broadband upgrades. Now, Lompoc can’t be accused of this strategy, but the incumbents should have egg on their face when they describe the expensive upgrades to cable and DSL installed in the city–only after the city’s plan to put in wireless first and fiber later was well underway. The head of the town’s wireless project said Comcast promised service upgrades for 10 years–probably from analog to digital cable for starters–and that the work to upgrade the network (which was finished this year) was done only in response to Lompoc’s plans. Likewise, Verizon admitted in this article that Lompoc was low on its list for improving DSL service and performance. This is interesting when you contrast it with the complaint of incumbents that those who ‘regulate’ them will compete against them. Regulation is a funny animal. Most telecom regulation is at a national level; franchise regulation is local. The ‘regulation’ they’re talking about is not whether a company has the right to provide service, but rather the rules and fees by which a company can use city facilities, such as light poles, conduits, and so forth. This form of regulation is really another aspect of a city’s right to self-determination. It can be used as a blunt instrument. In fact, Philadelphia reportedly prevented the entrance of a competitive cable company for years, restricting customer choice and favoring an incumbent franchise holder. But should the converse be true–should towns and cities be required to offer free or regulated (that word again) access on a non-discriminatory basis to everyone? We’ve seen that: that’s the trenching regulation. If you lived in, say, Palo Alto, Calif., during the dotcom boom, you have already seen trucks open up your street, put in cable, close it up, and then another set of trucks come in the next week. It may be that local bodies ‘regulate’ the incumbent cable and telecom providers, but they apparently have no leverage over them, otherwise Lompoc would have no reason (and no citizen support) for their fiber and wireless buildout…

Seniors Embrace Blogs

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AP:

There’s Dad’s Tomato Garden Journal, Dogwalk Musings, and, of course, the Oldest Living Blogger.

“It’s too easy to sit in your own cave and let the world go by, eh?” said Ray Sutton, the 73-year-old Oldest Living Blogger and a retired electrician who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. “It keeps the old head working a little bit so you’re not just sitting there gawking at TV.”

Google: What Lurks In It’s Soul?

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George Dyson:

My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”

When I returned to highway 101, I found myself recollecting the words of Alan Turing, in his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a founding document in the quest for true AI. “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,” Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

Google is Turing’s cathedral, awaiting its soul. We hope. In the words of an unusually perceptive friend: “When I was there, just before the IPO, I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming. Happy Golden Retrievers running in slow motion through water sprinklers on the lawn. People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil would come to earth, what place would be better to hide?”

Sony’s Evil DRM: Lawyers Run Amok

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EFF:

Now compare that baseline with the world according to the Sony-BMG EULA, which applies to any digital copies you make of the music on the CD:

  1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That’s because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.
  2. You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”
  3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
  4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates
  5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to “enforce their rights” against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this “self help” crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.
  6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That’s right, no matter what happens, you can’t even get back what you paid for the CD.
  7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
  8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.
  9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.

Amazing… Bruce Schneier has more.

Blogs Saving Arts Journalism

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Terry Teachout:

The emergence of the practitioner-blogger has the highest potential significance for arts journalism. Many, perhaps most, of the greatest critics in history — George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Edwin Denby and Fairfield Porter come immediately to mind — were also practicing artists. But with the growing tendency of mainstream-media journalists to think of themselves as members of an academically credentialed profession, the practitioner-critic has lately become a comparative rarity in the American print media. Not so on the Web, which is one of the reasons why readers in search of stimulating commentary on the arts are going online to find it.

Posted in Art.

Madison’s Martens on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit

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Wall Street Journal:

Bill and Barbara Marten of Madison, Wisc., buy medications from Canada and New Zealand to save money. Bill, 68, and Barbara, 69, are skeptical a Medicare drug plan can beat what they’re paying now for their prescription drugs.
Bill Marten has marked his calendar. This Saturday, he plans to take another stab at the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder.

More on Baldwin Against Free Speech

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Kristian Knutsen usefully follows up with Tammy Baldwin’s press secretary, Jerilyn Goodman on HR 1606 and now HR 4194:

Though this might appear to be a niche issue, the ongoing war of words of FEC regulation of online communications, particularly with respect to blogs, forums, wikis, and other interactive formats, is a matter of general import. As the internet grows in importance as a communications and organizing medium, the application of federal regulations to the ether will have tremendous economic and political implications. On Nov. 2, Rep. Tammy Baldwin voted against H.R. 1606, titled the “Online Freedom of Speech Act.” Exempting all internet communications from the FEC regulatory sphere, the bill was promoted by online political pundits across the ideological spectrum, but particularly by the highest profile partisan bloggers, namely Democratic Party activist Markos Moulitsas and Republican Party activist Mike Krempasky (who is also a new Wal-Mart online PR hire).

I cannot imagine anything positive arising from regulation on this matter.

Google’s Free WiFi Offer to Mountain View

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Silicon Beat:

As we noted earlier, Google wants to deploy free WiFi in its home town of Mountain View, and it’ll go before the city council next week to discuss its plans. Below is a link to a copy of the staff report that’s going to the city council (the city staff is endorsing the proposal), along with an attached letter from Google. Note the unusual candor with which Google explains its motives.
“In our self-interest, we believe that giving more people the ability to access the Internet will drive more traffic to Google and hence more revenue to Google and its partner websites.”

Proposal (PDF)

Civitas

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www.civitaswi.org:

CIVITAS will host 10 monthly luncheon forums focused on local finance, public education services and finances, and an analysis of local government services. (See Forum Calender for schedule of topics). Each luncheon will include presentations by past and current local officials, academic experts and representatives from community, business, professional and civic organizations. Presentations will be followed by questions from a panel of civitas members who have studied the monthly topic and audience questions.

All presentations will be recorded and posted on a civitas web site and media coverage of the information presented in the forums will be encouraged.

Civitas graduates will receive a certificate of attendance and a complete set of the presentations. Appointing authorities will receive an annual list of civitas graduates and will be encouraged to consider these individuals for appointments to boards, commissions and committees.

In addition, any civitas graduate who decides to become a candidate for local public office will be eligible to attend an annual civitas Candidate Training Program and an annual civitas Seminar on the Public Agenda which will examine the results of a county-wide public opinion survey of local issues.

Civitas is a joint undertaking of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and Wood Communications, according to a letter sent to chamber members by chairman Gary Wolter.