The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the Department of Agriculture released their initial 121 page “Notice of Funds Availability” (NOFA), the “stimulus program” for “broadband” projects. (I note with some consternation that the NOFA is specifying a tool (broadband) rather than the end goal of providing access to the Internet.) One of the major challenges in this NOFA is that it is designed to promote projects in unserved areas. The reason this is a challenge is that obtaining numbers for communities that are served, under-served, or unserved are difficult to come by, and even harder to prove.
Geoff Daily of AppRising has an intriguing idea. In his article Why Not Force Incumbents To Show Which Areas Are Served? Daily points out that the definitions underlying rural Internet access subsidies are rather problematic because they effectively limit funds to only the most rural areas (by excluding marginalized urban areas), and allow the incumbent telephone interests to refute claims of service by the upstarts. To address this problem:
I’d like to propose an alternative solution: why not force incumbents to show which areas are already served by threatening to consider all areas unserved that they don’t produce verifiable data for showing that they offer service there?
By doing this we’ll save applicants from wasting a lot of time and money collecting data that already exists, plus we’ll also enable them to know if the area they’re putting together a project for qualifies for subsidies before submitting their application. Additionally we’ll be able to take this data and use it to inform the broadband maps we’re charged with creating.
On the carrier side, we give them a clear reason for why they should give up their data on the availability of their services so as to insure we’re not subsidizing duplicative investment. And at the same time we can remove any appearance of prioritizing the protection of private service provider interests over making real progress in the deployment of broadband.
Hey, the incumbents have the real numbers. Why not make good use of them?
Network, Policy, Uncategorized access, incumbents, Internet, SOHO Nets, stimulus, underserved, unserved
A convenient way to stay informed of various events and sales, software updates, and other news and blogs, RSS news readers are quickly gaining ground as a desktop reference tool, as well as a great alternative to many email newsletters.
With scam artists, spammers and virus writers all using the e-mail inbox as the main target, it has become a daily nightmare for legitimate online publishers and marketers to cope with mail filters, blacklists and irate subscribers.
… ‘E-mail is dead, period,’ declares Chris Pirillo, the Internet entrepreneur who distributes about 400,000 e-mail newsletters weekly. ‘I don’t care what kind of legislation goes through, people aren’t signing up for newsletters anymore. People are assuming that every e-mail publisher is a spammer.’ “
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A moment on Labor Day to note that certain things are easier said than done, from small home offices to large multi-nationals. Here’s a piece from a letter by Michael Moore.
For his part, George W. Bush will spend Labor Day doing what he does best – not really working. Instead of protecting the country (I’ll have much more to say on that in the coming weeks) or addressing the nation’s floundering economy, he’ll be raising money for his re-election campaign in Ohio.
Bush is on pace to raise almost $200 million in time for the Republican primaries where his only competition will be his own dismal record. In Minnesota this past Tuesday, Bush raised $1.4 million by giving a 24-minute speech. That’s about $60,000 for each minute of “work.” By contrast, the weekly salary of the average American worker is a staggering $616.
As Ron Eibensteiner, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, left the event in St. Paul, he was met by hundreds of demonstrators. Being the dignified, freedom-loving, compassionate conservative we all wish we could be, Eibensteiner leaned over a police barricade toward the protestors and yelled, “GET A JOB!”
It was a positive, uplifting message to America. The Minnesota Republican Party isn’t going to do anything to turn the economy around, and Bush hasn’t done anything in almost three years in office. The best any of them can do is yell at people.
In the past year, 700,000 people were added to the list of unemployed. The number of people out of work for half a year or more is up 28%. Thanks to “Welfare to Work” (and Bill Clinton), July of 2003 saw 43.8% of the unemployed lose their state support even though they still could not find a job—a record high. Since Bush took over the country, roughly 2.5 million jobs have simply evaporated.
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Hollywood thinks it knows why 2003 is “rapidly becoming known as the year of the failed blockbuster.” It’s teenagers. They’re IM’ing their friends with instant reviews, and that’s killing the opening weekend sales. Nevermind instant customer feedback to both the movie content and to the “carefully crafted marketing campaigns” that don’t work.
Five years ago, when summer movies were arguably just as bad as they are now, the average audience drop-off between a film’s opening weekend and its second weekend was 40 per cent. This summer, it has been 51 per cent. In some cases, the drop-off has started between the film’s opening on a Friday night and the main screenings on Saturday. The upshot: unsuccessful films disappearing from cinemas so fast that there is no time for second opinions.
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Running XP? Be warned: Microsoft is considering mandatory and automatic patch installs.
“The company is ‘looking very seriously’ at requiring future versions of Windows to accept automatic software fixes unless the user specifically refuses to receive them, said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s security business unit.
‘The feedback we got when we did XP a few years ago was ‘I don’t want Microsoft automatically putting things onto my machine,’ ‘ Nash said. ‘What we’re finding now is that through a combination of the availability of broadband and customers wanting to stay up to date with security patches, and, most importantly, considering the kinds of threats out there now, that customers want us to keep them up to date automatically — not just by downloading the patches for them but installing them as well.’”
Nevermind the instability that this may introduce. I don’t think they’re suggesting that they’d install a patch to fix unbootable systems or come to our homes/offices and reinstall the system.
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Google just announced a mathematical calculator as part of its services– trained to recognize words and numbers.
But this calculator doesn’t just do simple multiplication. It also handles conversions. Cooks may like being able to type in “quarter cup in teaspoons” and see Google reply “1 quarter US cup = 12 US teaspoons.” Does a mechanic want to know the size of a replacement part for a clock in inches, but you only know it in millimeters? Enter ” .715 mm in inches” and Google will inform you it equals 0.0281496063 inches.
Google’s calculator goes beyond basic arithmetic to do complex math and crunch physical constants, too. It will process such queries as “G * mass of earth.” or “speed of light * two.” Type “What is the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight” and you’ll get this reply: “the speed of light = 1.8026175 x 10{+1}{+2} furlongs per fortnight.”
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The next incarnation in wireless networking?
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. expects a single-chip 2.4-GHz radio it’s announcing this week to leapfrog a batch of existing wireless technologies for such low-cost applications as keyboards, game pads, mice and remote controls. By stripping out the higher-layer networking support and complexity of Bluetooth, ZigBee, 27-MHz and 900-MHz wireless technologies, Cypress keeps the current draw of its WirelessUSB LS radio in sleep mode below 1 microamp and its price at about $2, with plans to cut it to $1 quickly, the company said.
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Agent Smith, last June in Japan:
then worshipping the dinosaur and other activities in NY earlier this month. Now Dublin and the slightly more far-flung parts are getting into the act.
One anonymous person noted that this activity could be the functional equivalent of a social denial of service attack on a recipient location, albeit a short-lived one.
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Device that picks up 0.495-2450MHz radio stations, also receives regular television signals, amateur television, and wireless security camera signals and more. Gives new meaning to “see what’s out there!”
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Wired article on why wireless Internet access is “such a dud business,” and why free access rules.
Starbucks charges up to $6 an hour for in-store T-Mobile access – not much more than a double venti Frappuccino with a raspberry shot. Though its wildly successful overpricing works for coffee, it’s failing with Wi-Fi. Demand for the service averages fewer than two customers a day per store.
Starbucks is just trying to cover its costs. Sure, leasing a broadband connection with a Wi-Fi base is cheap. But add a billing system – secure login server, transactional database, credit card processing, tech staff, customer service operators standing by – and the outlay skyrockets to $30, $50, even $70 a day, particularly if there are lots of support calls. (Ironically, most of those calls will be about problems with the billing system itself.) …
With business districts from Long Beach, California, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, falling over one another to promote Bryant Park-style networks, not having hot spots will soon be like not having drinking fountains. By year’s end, when McDonald’s makes good on its plan to roll out in-store networks and bundles free access with every Combo Meal, any lingering doubts will be erased. Wi-Fi isn’t a luxury or even a commodity. It’s a condiment.
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