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these projects are state run. There was no bidding.

Well, there was the Houston one ( http://www.govtech.net/digitalcommunities/story.ph p?id=98722 ) that had a competitive bid that was very nearly killed by a state law whose language originally banned such partnerships http://www.stc-houston.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t= 874&sid=c5fcdcc14f97b926ebd1bbdf38549e1c

Remember the big hubbub about Philadelphia's municipal wireless program and how communism was going to take over the world? It's run by Earthlink http://simianbrain.atlblogs.com/archives/006656.ht ml

Most other cities also contract out their "municipal" wireless, for instance, the wireless network in Burleson, TX is run by Chevron. http://muniwireless.com/municipal/1121/
More: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22municipal+wirele ss%22+contract

I'm not sure what point you're making.

So yes, my point. Mayors recognize that they are not capable of running a wireless network all by themselves, but if a major telco player does not want to bother with their community, then the mayor is going to find someone who will. This scares the major telco players because someday they might want to provide service to that community, only to face an uphill battle against an incumbent that had secured choice transmitter locations from the city, so they push for laws to ensure that those communities will remain open for the day that they deign to provide their services.

How does this relate to this story? If AT&T decides to roll out fiber to only the "richest" homes due to "cost concerns", you can be sure that they have something up their sleeve to prevent other companies from deciding that they can provide the same service at a lower capital cost to the remaining neighborhoods, and subsequently make a profit at lower rates. This no doubt would scare AT&T shitless, after all they'd face that same uphill battle if a Company X ran fiber to the rest of the city, while their "wealthy" customers are dropping AT&T's higher-priced service in hopes that Company X will roll out their lower-priced service to their neighborhood.

As I recall, all of these projects were state/city run.

You apparently recall wrong.

Private companies are not the government

"THE GOVERNOR HAS ALSO CALLED FOR THE LIFETIME REGISTRATION OF ALL REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS INCLUDING THOSE OFFENDERS ALREADY REGISTERED." (document is in all caps, it's not me yelling) -- http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/pio/2005-5-03te stimony.htm

"The Governor's legislation would not only expand the information available to the public by having all offenders, regardless of level, listed on the Internet, but the proposed bill would require all convicted sex offenders to register with DCJS for life." -- http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/ 97392

"His proposed new legislation would require lifetime registry for all sex offenders." -- http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/042805 sexoff.html

And that's not even mentioning the fact that he tried to keep people in jail who had already completed their maximum prison sentence. An appeals court ruled that illegal. I'm not sure if they ever got out.

Grand Haven, Michigan, has had it's wireless network up for almost 2 years now (July 2004). Granted, it's only about 12,000 people, but I would say it still qualifies as a city.

Schwarzenegger's appointed Republican Secretary of State has recertified Diebold's ballot machines in California, despite their being barred. California prosecuted Diebold's executives for lying to the state about their rigged machines. But of course, Schwarzenegger's on the ropes, so he needs those machines to "terminate" the opposition.

Quoting:

"I don't know what the right response is for you people, but clearly the state officials are being "handled" by Diebold here. You have to find some way expose or work against or break this down."

Well we've "handled" it back so far by proposing a much more reasonable test protocol. No response yet from them.

The thing about us doing the hack is, yes it'll be great if it's fair, but...OK, let's say the SecState's office does it, and it turns out later that what they tested was a classic "lab queen" Diebold Frankensteined up nice and special. Can you say "egg on face"? "Who does the hack" is connected to "who takes the political risk if it's done wrong"...noteworthy especially since state law (EC19202) says it's THEM that does the testing...

At the same moment we replied in EMail to the SecState's office, we put out a press release on this subject...we've had a fair number of responses so far and a few of hits in Google News just today:

http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/ 97374

(and the same story above in another "government news site"...)

http://www.fcw.com/article91533-11-23-05-Web

It's not a lot...but it's had one comical effect: the various reporters we've talked to have all tried to call the guy at the SecState's office engineering this thing (Bruce McDannold, whose phone number we included in our press release) and they all say he hasn't answered phone calls. He also hasn't gotten back to us, which is odd because he's usually very good about returning EMails.

I refuse to speculate on what he's up to and I'll forego the snideness I'm thinking.

To answer your original question: we WILL do this thing even with at least some of their restrictions in place...but we want a basically fair shot here, and what was proposed...well y'all can decide for yourselves what sort of offer they made us.

---

Full disclosure: I helped Bev Harris decipher the massive pile of files she downloaded from a Diebold FTP site in January '03 starting around July '03 on my part. She founded Black Box Voting Inc. as a non-political non-profit (501(c)(3) tax status) in mid-2004, at which time I became a volunteer member of the BBV board of directors. In July I lost my day job and three weeks ago I joined the full-time staff at BBV, resigning from the board of directors and moving up to the Seattle area. BBV has a full-time staff of three, I make $2k a month. Bev and I were the two co-plaintiffs in a consumer protection lawsuit in California that netted the state of California a $2.6mil refund; Bev and I each collected a "bounty" of $76,000. That suit started prior to BBV's formation as a non-profit and was run without any of the non-profit's resources.

If the presidential election is within 10% either way (and from the current polls, that would seem to be likely), we are going to see a firestorm of lawsuits. With all the experts claiming electronic voting systems are insecure, both sides are already gearing up for legal battle.

Don Campbell at USA Today has an interesting op/ed piece on the subject.

Berzerkely has collected a large amount of information on this site. Lots of interesting data.

The ITD website has some really kewl stuff on it like a legal toolkit for using Open Source software. Press releases on the sit seem to indicate that Republican Governer Mitt Romney is behind the move to open source. He'll be getting my vote when he runs for re-election.

"An acceleration of change has consequences that are not necessarily a result of whether the change is good or bad, but just acceleration itself creates consequences and some difficulties for us. While I recognize that, nevertheless, I believe that we need to let go. There are many things that we need to let go. Rather than focus on hanging on, we need to focus on inventing."

Being intimately involved with technology in a K-12 public school system in New England I see this SF issue as political or massive incompetence because they are paying way too much per node. I get big discounts on all most all technology related purchases I make. I have read some good things about what is happening in Maine that I am attempting to clone in my district.

Perhaps the issue is HOW technology is integrated and supported in the classroom!

The Shuttle was built by subcontractors, about 10,000 of them. And no, having 1 contractor with all the divisions needed to make everything from tires to space toilets to tiles wouldn't make the thing any more reliable.

If this is just a "standard" for getting all the extra-cost set-top-boxes to talk to all the government-mandated digital TVs, then it's not much of a victory for consumers. That will just mean the government is mandating we all "upgrade" our cable subscriptions to watch plain old TV.

An Urban Data Goldmine from govtech

An Urban Data Goldmine from govtech

I used to have a friend who worked, uh, temped for AOL. I still have part of this email he sent to me

"On the 25 minute walk that I make to work I usually think about work on the way there, thereby doing what I always promised I would never do as long as I was a "temp" - think about work outside of being at work. Only a God can spend 8 hours 5 days a week someplace and not wonder what their place in it was. As a "temp" at the end of the century your place was/is even more displaced than your fellow postmodern brethren. The turd of the Virtual Elite, on a global level a "temp" exists on a plane with structurally readjusted peoples and prisoners. On the local level a "temp" is nearly a non presence, disposable, cloneable, or on its best day not qualified enough to be solidified."

I think he touches on several good points. Economist Richard Rosecrance wrote a book a few years ago called "The Rise of the Virtual State"(yes walmart sells it). In it he basically said that nations will divide into two parts, ala Descartes, the head, or mind, and the body. The mind will perform the information and idea tasks, the US, Europe, Japan, and the body will handle the labor, China, Mexico, Africa.

It is especially interesting when that mind/body split is enforced here in the US of A. Plenty of people say, well if they would just get more of an education then they would be alright. In a sense that is correct, but overall it is a push to drive us in the US toward strictly virtual or mind based production and send all the body work elsewhere. As an economic solution, it may work for us in the US for the short time that we are alive, but also you have to wonder about the political aspects that help set these divisions into play, ie dictatorships in Africa, the decline of organized labor in the US and the massive push in the tech sector to outsource as much of the workload as possible.

More or less, for every person making 80k and saying, just get more productive schooling, there are 10 college graduates wondering if they will ever get their teeth cleaned again. It's our economic policy.

Maybe some folks will not only like, but will love this stuff.

Obviously this is intended to bew the final solution to pesky little things like user free will and responsibility.

the RIAA, etc are just going to lap this up.

Fortunately, the move to open source and Linux is picking up speed. As seen in this report in the Government Technology Mag many governments are looking in Linux for reasons of their national security.

While many folks like a comfy life, there are many that do not want the "comfy sofa technique" and who will rebel just because somebody says that they have to have things a certain way.

This keeps up, and I'll get ready to join "geeks with guns"

They allowed that, then mandated it, several years ago.

Nope -- I have a number on my (VA) license that has no connection to my SSN.

What happened is that 1)Rep. Lamar Smith pushed through a bill that would have mandated that the driver's license become a de facto national ID card bearing the SSN, 2)Rep. Smith in particular and Congress in general caught hell, 3)Some members of Congress (notably Rep. Ron Paul) are trying to repeal the original bill; failing that, they've pushed back the deadline and/or forbidden the spending of any money on the program year after year.

The article also touches on some of the obstacles government agencies face trying to purchase "free" software. As a bonus, you get a few comments from Slashdot's resident Apache expert Jim Jagielski.

Hipnerd

In the spirit full disclosure, I should probably mention that I wrote the article.

The article also touches on some of the obstacles government agencies face trying to purchase "free" software. As a bonus, you get a few comments from Slashdot's resident Apache expert Jim Jagielski.

Hipnerd

In the spirit full disclosure, I should probably mention that I wrote the article.