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From last summer. He's worried about the long-term implications of spectrum not being shared.

http://tales-of-the-sausage-factory.wetmachine.com/my-insanely-long-field-guide-to-lightsquared-v-the-gps-guys/

I was one of the people kept out of the FCC hearing at Harvard by the Comcast drones. I did get in, after 2.5 hours, for the remaining 3 hours or so. At the reception afterwards, I spoke about Net Neutrality with Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman. My report is here: http://www.wetmachine.com/item/1084

Giving the FCC authority can stop the telcos & cablecos from arguing that the FCC is not allowed to regulate them.
See Harold Feld's commentary on this bill.

A lot of analysts are certain Google's not bidding to win, just to make sure they hit the reserve price and ensure openness provisions kick in. Everybody's sure Google doesn't want to be a network operator.

And they may well be right on that count -- but who says they don't want to be a network *architect*? Google has, as TFA points out, $13b in cash. They could easily afford the final sticker price on the licenses, then lease the spectrum to players who have to play on *precisely* their terms (which probably entails not just open access, but a dumb pipe -- just providing bandwidth, instead of mobile phone service.) That pushes the buildout cost away from GOOG, but still might allow for a hellacious ROI.

I can't take credit for these insights/speculations myself -- check out Harold Feld's take and a great deal more detail.

Sort of like this fable (http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/403):

Once a poor man walked down the streets, weak with hunger. As he passed a bakery, he paused to smell the aroma of baking bread. Hmmmm.....it was delicious. I took another deep breath. Ahhhh. Wonderful. Straightening, he took one last deep breath and prepared to move on.

Before the poor man could move, the baker ran out of the store yelling "Stop Thief!" Siezing hold of the startled poor man the baker shook him roughly and said "Pay thief."

"For what?" Asked the poor man.

"For the smell of the bread." Answered the Baer.

"What?" Said the poor man. "Whoever heard of paying for the smell of the bread? Now if I had taken your bread and eaten it, I would of course have paid. But I have no money, so I merely smelled the aroma of the bread baking as I passed."

"Aha!" Said the Baker. "You admit you went out of your way to smell the aroma of my baking bread. Now let me tell you, I work hard to make the smell of the bread. I rise at four in the morning. I gather the wood for the fire. I pay for the finest flour and the best ingredients. I mix everything just so. Only after all this labor do I put the dough in the oven, where it makes its smell. Yet you would compensate me for none of this labor! Thief, I say. I will not let you go until you pay."

"But you do not do this labor to make bread smell! You do this labor to make bread, which you sell for a good price. In this way are your efforts repaid. The smell comes whether you want it or not. You cannot have the bread without making the smell, which drifts on the wind free as air."

Still the baker would not let him go. "Maybe so, maybe so," said the Baker. "But you did more than just walk by. You stopped to smell the bread. You got benefit from my labor. Why should you not pay."

A crowd had gathered as the men spoke. And while some said the Poor Man spoke truth, others said the Baker also spoke truth. After all, should the poor man enjoy the sweat of te Baker's brow for free? So they resolved to take the matter to King Solomon, the wisest man on Earth, for him to judge.

The Baker and the Poor Man went to Solomon and each told their tale. When Solomon had heard their tale, he thought a moment. Then, he took some coins from his pocket and gave them to the Poor Man.

"Take these coins," said Solomon. "And jingle them by the ear of the Baker." When the Poor Man had done so, Solomon looked at the Baker and said: "As you have now received your payment, why do you stand about here? Depart!"

The Baker looked at the King astonished. "But our majesty," said the Baker. "I have received nothing."

"Nonesense," replied the King. "Just as the Poor Man received the smell of the bread, you have been paid with the sound of the money."

If you haven't had a chance to hear it, this is porbably worth it. (About an hour long)

http://www.educause.edu/elements/pol06feldgs.mp3

More can be read at: http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/

C.f. Acts of the Apostles. Chapter 4 is probably a good place to start for this particular topic.

C.f. Acts of the Apostles. Chapter 4 is probably a good place to start for this particular topic.

Actually, lots of other people have identified the specific problems this kind of licensing poses for low power apps, like WiFi mesh, that offer real local community value. Shortsighted dismissal of that conflict plays right into the hands of large corporate interests, like Intel's, which were protected by this process, despite lots of public opposition.

For example, there was a neatly done study on preferences that showed that brief exposure to an image - too short for conscious recognition or memory - would result in that image being chosen as prefered by the subject as compared to a new image. (The test images were abstract black and white, symmetrical patterns.)

Another study using a bowl in which a dollar would appear each day, and the total dollar amount would be doubled at the end of the week if the dollar was not taken, showed that people will only slowly learn not to take the dollar each day. This is especially true if it involves cooperation with other people, when everyone has to not take the money for everyone to have the money doubled.

In the first case, there's no rational choice for the preference. In the second, the behavior is clearly irrational if the goal is larger gain. Advertisers have always exploited the first case.

And this is not new. I blogged about this a year ago.

It was quite the fun book for those paranoid about technology, especially nano/bio stuff.

The Bonehead Computer Museum is Still looking for entries! Sent photos and stories of your own most boneheaded digital and analog designs for exhibition. The Bonehead Computer museum was featured prominently in John Sundman's award winning Acts of the Apostles

The Bonehead Computer Museum is Still looking for entries! Sent photos and stories of your own most boneheaded digital and analog designs for exhibition. The Bonehead Computer museum was featured prominently in John Sundman's award winning Acts of the Apostles

From my perspective, as the author of a handful of unpublished SF novels, the difficulty is that the major publishing houses right now have little interest in producing works outside of perceived "mainstream" genres. The large publishing groups want works that will immediately hit the marketplace and sell 100,000 copies -- and that spells doom for the new SF author.

The reason there are no new "icons" in SF is because the publishers have not given any new authors a chance at a wide audience, and responding with sentiments about "making the novels free" does not cut the mustard because the internet has distribution problems of its own. Just ask John Sundman.

My apologies, to make up for my error here are some links about subjects pertinent to my previous post...

John Sundmans Yahoo group: *

Project Gutenburg: *
WetMachine

And some information about creative commons act: *


I hope this makes up for my transgression ;)

Nit

You could try
Cheap Complex Devices or
Acts of the Apostles
both great geek reads and both available (for FREE)
at www.wetmachine.com

For what it's worth, the author of the article is the same guy that wrote Acts of the Apostles, as reviewed here, and available on his website.

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In the Introduction the author quotes "Industrial Society and Its Future," better known as the Unabomber Manifesto, but credits the author as "Ted Kaczynsky"....

I believe it's spelled Kaczynski, at least that's the way the court documents read....

In The United States District Court
For The Eastern District of California

United States of America,
Plaintiff
v.
Theodore John Kaczynski
aka "FC"
Defendant.

But that's a small caveat, hopefully the publisher will catch that before it goes into the next printing.

#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak