Slashback: Solidarity, Friction, Dreams

More on power woes in California; a ray of light to all the would-be Delux DVD players in the audience; snappy comebacks from Sega; and some updates on the ever-intriguing Project Pengachu. Mmmmmm. All below, so use that mouse finger.

Good reason to stay on the 3rd coast, Bruce. Steven Johnson of Feed writes: "hey man, here's an excellent one for you: Bruce Sterling on the thirteen causes behind the California power crisis. All about how it's the result of treating energy networks like information networks. Classic Sterling. Enjoy!"

No accounting for taste, but on a length / goodness ratio basis, this is perhaps my new favorite Sterling article ever, too. Bam.

I'll believe it when that inventory is replenished. Patrick writes: "It's off the front page so no one will see an update or comment, but [this site] has the official statement from Sega. FYI"

The points made in this statement still don't say that Sega will continue to produce Dreamcast consoles past March (or any other time), but do emphasize that Sega has no intention of stopping the supply of games for their console, and are "currently in negotiations" to provide games for Game Boy Advance and PlayStation 2. Also, the affirm previous reports that Sega is promoting the Dreamcast's architecture for use in PCs and other places.

aztektum points somewhat more directly to the Sega statement (in Japanese, that is), with a link he claims was found on IGN.

The Wailing Walls have ears. Adam Alexander, webmaster of Dulux Consumer Support, writes to assure Slashdot readers that despite his site's name,"My site is not an advertisement for the company; in fact many parts of it are very critical of the company. The purpose is to help people who have already ordered the product in getting the product or getting a refund. My site discourages new orders at this time, at least until the old orders are taken care of."

As the introduction to that site puts it, the page "has been created to serve as a central location for interaction between people who placed orders for a Dulux DVD/MP3/Karaoke/Game Player and would like to share customer service or product information."

That sounds pretty smart. Any class-action lawyers around?

I would not name a daughter this. PSUdaemon writes "Back in November there was a post about Pengachu. A project to provide cheap wireless internet in a handheld. The handhelds are designed with the Linux coder in mind. With ports for an external keyboard and mouse, you can take your projects anywhere. There is a Web Page now with lots of details and pictures. Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to buy one..."

I'd like to suggest a slogan for the wildly successful spin-off this project deserves to spawn: "It's from MIT, so it's got to be good!" Certainly a good step toward ubiquity.

Comments

Re:Sega never made moeny on the dreamcast unit

[Urban Existentialist]

Yes, they didn't make any money off the hardware directly. However, every game released by a games company for the Sega platform had to have liscense money payed to Sega, even if the develepors were not related to Sega at all. This made up a fairly large chunk of Sega's cashflow. In addition, they made money from their own games that they wrote for their platform. The situation is similar for Sony.

Now that Sega will be developing games for the PSX2, this is very good news for Sony, as they will make money off every Sega game released for the PSX2, and it will give their product better games (imagine what Sonic the Hedgehog on the PSX2 would do for sales). I don't know if they will release thier major games characters for other platforms, or if they will restrict themselves to consoles only, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Their brands are their strong suit..

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

A different view of the California power problems.

[Spamuel]

"California's utilities have lost billions and billions. They owe it to people who (a) aren't Californian and (b) aren't kidding about collecting that debt."

I happen to live in Canada, and our local utility company is owed a fair amount of money for providing power to California. Unfortunatly the Californian utility we sold power to is now declaring bankruptcy, leaving our utility company screwed out of millions of millions of dollars (guess who's going to pay for that loss). So Californians and their utility companies aren't the only ones getting screwed over...

Public Utilities owned by the people

[SubtleNuance]

hey man, here's an excellent one for you: Bruce Sterling on the thirteen causes behind the California power crisis. All about how it's the result of treating energy networks like information networks.

Correct me if I am wrong - but werent Californians enjoying fine, reliable, reasonably-priced utilities before they deregulated?

Couldnt one argue that a utility should be held in the public domain? In times like these where prices are high the Utility companies take it up the duff - when wholesale prices are low they make out like bandits... its balanced. When the public owns the utility this is acceptable, knowing that the good comes w/ the bad and 'vica-versa'. But when the companies are owned by profit-hungry MultiNational cartels, they MUST have a profit, every quarter - and each quarter must be more profitable than the last... it is a little silly to assume they will act in the best interest of Californians... so, why again did you decide to sell off your once reliable, affordable public utility?

Re:Public Utilities owned by the people

[nels_tomlinson]

The short answer is: "if Marxism-Leninism was a good idea, the USSR would be the richest nation on the planet, at least in the sense of the standard of living for the average guy." The long answer to "could a utility be held in the public domain?" is no. If utilities are publically owned, the decisions about how much to produce, how, and who gets it are made politically. Trust me, that's bad. (Trust me, I'm an economist...)

The problems in CA stem from political action. California chose to deregulate the wholesale market, without deregulating the retail market. Thus, consumers had no incentive to conserve when supplies got tight, while the utilities had to keep buying power to meet demand, however high the prices got. That was only the second mistake. They didn't understand the economics of these markets yet, and did some rather stupid things with zonal pricing which aggravated the problem. William Hogan has an interesting paper on his website, in particular this one.

Those links don't seem to be working in the preview, so here they are in cut-and-paste form:
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.whogan.cbg.ksg/
and
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.whogan.cbg.ksg/zonal_ Feb11.pdf

What was the first mistake? Their stupid, infeasible environmental laws, which are really about social and technological ignorance and NIMBY rather than any realistic concern for the human environment. It would be irresponsible to invest any money in power generation or transmission facilities in the People's Republic of California, and the fact that there hasn't been much such investment in recent decades shows that most gereration company CEO's have good sense.

You mention that it's silly to assume that the multinationals would act in the best interests of the Californians. That's sort of right, except that what they are doing is really in the long term best interests of the Californians. By driving up the prices of power, they give incentives to build more generation and transmission facilities in California. The State Government is of course trying to counteract these incentives, with talk of "nationalization" and price caps.

Re:Public Utilities owned by the people

[Bios_Hakr]

Don't trash the environmentalists (does that sound right? who knows). Environmentalists, feminists, NRA, PETA. All these groups are the core of our real political process. While it is true that these groups seem to dominate your government...that is how it is SUPOSED to be.

If you want something, say openDVD, you can go to your senator and ask him for it, or you and 900 friends can e-mail him (Kurt-the-Pope can then be hired to filter your DoS attack), or you can form a political action group based on open standards and get 30 seconds on CNN. Which has more power? Which has the best chance of achiveing your goals?

Remember...political action groups are there because they work. Find a group that supports YOUR goals, and join.

Just try to remember to fight the cause, not the group. It isn't the environmentalists you dislike, but the lack of new power stations...

I have to say, I agree with Bruce...

[Thalia]

I think the #1 reason, and the one Mr. Sterling lists as unlucky #13 is:

13. This is unlucky 13, the grand finale. Californians feel lambasted, defrauded, and bamboozled by Old Economy "pirate generators" such as (let's name names here) Reliant Energy, El Paso Energy, Dynegy, Duke Energy, AES, Southern, Calpine, and Enron. But Enron in particular is George W. Bush's favorite company in the whole wide world. James W. Baker is Enron's lawyer. The Pirate Generators own Washington. The Information Superhighway is suddenly yesterday's news, somebody else's concept, all hype and ozone. The NASDAQ is in the tank, while the utility sector is the new darling of Wall Street. Furthermore, it very much galls the new administration that the homeland of Reagan is currently run by Democrats. An economic crunch in California is the prelude to a political assault from Washington.

The deregulation of the utilities in California is the legacy of Pete Wilson. I expect the Republicans are not too appreciative of California, even though we generate a larger percentage of the GNP than any other state... but we voted for Gore. I'm investing in a generator...

Thalia

PG&E / California is more scam than Bruce lets on.

[amphgobb]

Bruce's article is good and shows a lot of different viewpoints on the California "power crisis" ... but maybe if Bruce was more involved with everything that is going on, or if he talked to some people about it ... in a nutshell, PG&E is scamming everyone and outright threatening blackouts if they don't get their way (and they have had rolling blackouts here). San Francisco, in particular, is the only city in the entire country that is federally mandated to have cheap, public power... so PG&E has spent a lot of money to keep that law out of its way. And there's so much more. PG&E can go to hell, and there is a growing ratepayers strike happening in the SF Bay Area. For more information that is more specific than what Bruce writes, check out the SF Bay Guardian coverage or SF Independent Media Center coverage. The corporate media is just reciting press releases from PG&E and Gov. Davis.

Amusing when they live with their mistakes

[WillSeattle]

It's incredibly ironic that:

A. Californians elected GOP legislators who, fed by fat cat Texan-owned firm campaign contributions, pushed through deregulation.

B. The world's largest wind energy power facility is being built in Oregon and Washington state, while California refuses to build any power plants.

C. The first company I ever worked for (as a Power Engineer, actually), Cominco, is selling the power generation from their private dam to save California's butt, since they can make more money selling them hydro power than smelting non-ferrous minerals (yes, that includes gold and silver, but is mostly lead and other alloys).

D. Washington State dams are running flat out shipping power to California to the point that many of the lakes behind are drying out - this during our worst snowfall year in a decade when we have cold temperatures that force us to use energy.

and, last, but not least

E. The feds still try to get you to believe that the answer is to build coal plants, when anyone worth their salt could show you 4.5 cents per KW hour costs to build wind energy plants that have close to zero apian kill ratios and allow the land to be used for farming and other purposes. And even at current pricing, natural gas is still cheaper to use, if you would just build it, than coal. Especially sulfur coal - and I've seen what happens if you're crazy enough to use that -the Trilateral Commission forced Cominco to install scrubbers on all its stacks due to sulfur and lead outputs.