While we fiddle with poor (slow) broadband penetration and the incumbent telco’s try to stop any other approaches, such as municipally backed networks, South Korea surges (the US is currently 13th in global broadband penetration). Birgitta Forsberg takes a look at South Korea’s winning ways.
Open Records & Election Flaws
Greg Borowski continues his excellent coverage on local election flaws:
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.
Wisconsin’s Gateway Patrol Gets High Marks
BootFinder & Carjacking
New Haven city marshals, armed with a new tool that photographs auto license plates
and instantly matches them against a tax scofflaw database, had towed
Byers’ car right out of his driveway.
More on the changing advertising landscape
Several recent articles on the changing advertising landscape (struggling to keep up with our changing habits):
- Newspaper quality & quantity circulation continue to decline. More here.
- Terry Heaton on what happens when consumers reject advertising.
More on the Bad Bankruptcy Bill that Kohl voted for
Joshua Trevino calls the bankruptcy bill a “breach of faith,” and observes, “When it passes — and it will — it will be thanks purely to the Republican Party.” via instapundit. More here: red states have it worse under the bill, interestingly enough…. Interesting Republican payback. I still don’t understand Kohl’s support for this…
Malcolm Gladwell at the UW on Blink
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.
Kohl’s Odd Vote for the Flawed Bankruptcy Bill
Senator Kohl cast an odd vote for the flawed bankruptcy bill (getting it out of committee. He’s evidently, according to a staff person, pulling a “kerry”: voting for it, before voting against the final bill). Why would Kohl, “Nobody’s Senator But Your’s” cozy up to the credit card companies? I hope he has a strong opponent in the next election….
The folks at www.downsizedc.org are right on….
Choicepoint files found riddled with errors
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.
Mossberg on Google’s Autolink
Steve Rubel summarizes Walt Mossberg’s comments on Google’s AutoLink/Adlink toolbar.