In Oregon, where the Personal Telco Project has been slowly stitching together a free wifi network in Downtown Portland, the threat to municipal broadband comes in the form of HB 2445.
This pending bill places some crippling roadblocks in the way of municipal broadband for Oregon. It would require municipalities to have a majority vote in a referendum before providing any such service and would subject the proposed municipal communications providers to open records and open meetings requirements that do not apply to private-sector providers.
Requirements like those are just the Oregon way. I've lived in many places, and Oregon by far has the most politically active citizenry. While on the surface such requirements may seem appealing in order to protect Oregonians, they might just be the sugar coating a poison pill for municipal wifi.
The bill also calls for a cost-benefit analysis to be done at the end of three years. Three years is a very short time to see a return on investment. And the process detailed by HB 2445 would need to be repeated for each municipality as the network expands. This sounds like a long and tedious process. By the time anything can be done, the technology to disseminate network connectivity will have changed multiple times.
That is an excellent point. The Television Industry is concerned about viewers recording shows and are putting a stop to it in a number of ways. Sometimes they strong arm DVR producers, or convince the manufactures of DVR devices to cripple features... and of course they are lobbying hard for the broadcast flag.
But what is interesting is that, at least for network television, they are using our airwaves. You know, the ones that we as a people license to them via the FCC? If they broadcast a television show into my house and over my airwaves, don't I have the right to do what I want with that data?
Perhaps threatening to pull licenses from each of the affiliates of a given network, like NBC would get their attention that we are not messing around. The gravy train is over, guys. You can continue to make a profit, but no more gouging. Cope.
The numbers are compelling to pay for and distribute most television material privately.
I pay around $50 a month for Comcast cable. Assuming that each series costs an average of 10 million a season, and I only watch shows that appeal to at least 1 million viewers who are also willing to pay, that means I can purchase rights for private viewing of a series of shows for $10. I could afford to pick 60 series a year to sponsor for the same cost as my cable. Commercial free and delivered over my broadband. Why get it any other way?
I recognize the foolishness of "Buy-American" viewpoints, and protectionist economies clearly stagnate over time, but the evidence suggests that Walmart does not strengthen enconomies large or small in the long term.
What they do seem to do rather effectively, is fuel price races to the bottom in every field they enter. This can't be good for any community. I would rather pay a few dollars more to buy a product from a local business, or a local geek to provide the same product or service.
If this is the case, and the relationship between Checkfree and Intuit is the only reason this is happening, why would Intuit also disable:
"...downloading financial data from your bank, credit union, credit card, brokerage, 401(k) or mutual fund accounts; downloading stock quotes, news headlines and other financial information into Quicken; uploading portfolio information from Quicken to Quicken.com; and access to the investing features on Quicken.com including portfolio tracking, any watch lists you have created, One-Click Scorecard(TM), Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator."
Intuit is clearly attempting to churn theirsales by making prior releases of their software unusable. Worse, they are doing it by removing features from the application which purchasers of the software did not know were 'time-limited'.
What is even more frustrating is how short the 'sunset' period is becoming. Assuming that each product is available on Janurary 1st of it's release year:
Broadcasting electricity is not a new idea. Tesla built a giant Tesla coil in Colorado Springs in an attempt to broadcast power around the world. The coil could produce very high voltages and emit huge sparks from a copper ball on the tall tower. Tesla's idea was that the earth was rife with electricity, and one could tap into it at any point. The giant coil was to be Tesla's attempt to tap the Earth's natural electromagnetic field.
In his first test Tesla burned out a generator at Colorado Springs. Later there were claims that he succeeded in lighting 200 incandescent bulbs at a distance of 25 miles. But this was never confirmed. Tesla never published a thorough description of his work. Even if the thing worked it's difficult to see how you'd avoid wasting huge amounts of energy.
Still, if Splashpower is successful, I'd like it. Resting my sonicare toothruch in that smooth plastic base rather than fumbling for a power jack in the morning is great.
In addition to taking donated equipment and recycling hazardous components like monitors and laptop batteries, they also provide free training, and a program to provide free PCs running Mandrake to people in the community.
I'd have to agree. If the broacasters are successful in this suit, and the basis of their case is that their music is sequential rather than random access, I don't see how the ruling couldn't apply to webcasters as well.
It also occurs to me that the main issue with the royalty payments must be with the ability to record the stream, and the possibility that the stream is close to CD quality. From the beginning, I thought a solution would be to dilute the quality of the broadcast to radio quality (less than 96 kbits) or to deliver the content as 3WK does, and deliver a high quality mono broadcast.
Typically, I use webcasted music to be exposed to new bands and genres, and I don't see how the music industry could be opposed to that. Sheesh.
Sounds kind of like a blow off, but if this campaign was a one off thing for Amex, as he claims, then it really isn't that big of deal.
We were forwarded your e-mail and wanted to thank you for taking the time to let us know your comments.
This promotion was a custom made idea for a new service that American Express was launching. While it was a successful means to gain attention and help drive awareness, it was a distinct idea that worked for this specific service.
Thank you for your loyal support.
Steve Koonin
Turner Network Television
Executive Vice President and General Manager
Of course, they don't provide that information online, but a Google search for smith@turner.com reveals their naming scheme as [firstname].[lastname]@turner.com.
http://www.aoltimewarner.com/corporate_informati on/turner_broadcasting.adp provides the names of the executive board.
I sent the following email: (These accounts did not bounce)
In reading the July 15th issue of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the article titled "New Breed Ff TV Ads Popping Up" caught my attention. It describes a new method of advertising your network is considering whereby advertisements will 'pop-up' during the show in the corner of the screen.
As a viewer, I can tell you that this is not an advertising method I find desirable. I think it will be obtrusive and disruptive to my enjoyment of your programming. So much so, that it would be pointless for me to continue to endure those commercials, and I would not tune in to TNT anymore.
In fact, I find this poor idea so distasteful, I would likely remove TNT from the channel search of my television.
I am sure that I share this opinion with many television viewers, and I hope that our opinions matter to you.
Please do not display 'pop-up' ads on your network.
Sincerely,
Mike XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Rd. Portland, OR XXXXX XXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
You know, it might be my general mood just now, but after reading Greenspun's job offer, I am outraged.
He'll be flying around in a quarter million dollar airplane, while some schmoe schleps around driving his books, bicycles and dog bed for thousands of miles all summer long? Not only that, but when he's around, his serf will sleep in a tent outside?
Sounds like a great way to spend the summer. What a jackass.
Frankly, I was impressed by ATT's speedy recovery of my service after @Home made the decision to drop me as a customer. I was down fo less than 24 hours (05:23 PST Sat. - 03:12 PST Sun.) and their automated telephone notification was great. Of course, the Portland and Seattle areas were restored first, so YMMV.
The only critique I might have is that casual internet users, like the guy that I ran into at CompUSA on Sun while I was buying blank CD's. He had no idea what to do, or where to check. All he knew was taht in the morning his connection was gone, and that @Home was in bankruptcy.
But, typically, casual users of all sorts pay the price when things break down, whether their broadband connection breaks down, or their car leaves them stranded on the side of the road.
THe problem we had with using text in our navigation bar was the length of the txt in other languages.
For example, "Locations" on the navigation bar is great in English, but in German, the legth becomes quite a bit longer, and can make the rest of the text shift off of the 800 X 600 page.
We opted to use graphics that would be meaningful across cultures (a Newspaper indicating news) and a mouseover event that causes the text of the icons meaning to appear centered below the bar.
Of course, the text is context sensitive to the prefered language of the browser.
Slashdot Mirror
It's flexible, and I like it. You might too.
This pending bill places some crippling roadblocks in the way of municipal broadband for Oregon. It would require municipalities to have a majority vote in a referendum before providing any such service and would subject the proposed municipal communications providers to open records and open meetings requirements that do not apply to private-sector providers.
Requirements like those are just the Oregon way. I've lived in many places, and Oregon by far has the most politically active citizenry. While on the surface such requirements may seem appealing in order to protect Oregonians, they might just be the sugar coating a poison pill for municipal wifi.
The bill also calls for a cost-benefit analysis to be done at the end of three years. Three years is a very short time to see a return on investment. And the process detailed by HB 2445 would need to be repeated for each municipality as the network expands. This sounds like a long and tedious process. By the time anything can be done, the technology to disseminate network connectivity will have changed multiple times.
Mike.
http://injoke.org
But what is interesting is that, at least for network television, they are using our airwaves. You know, the ones that we as a people license to them via the FCC? If they broadcast a television show into my house and over my airwaves, don't I have the right to do what I want with that data?
Perhaps threatening to pull licenses from each of the affiliates of a given network, like NBC would get their attention that we are not messing around. The gravy train is over, guys. You can continue to make a profit, but no more gouging. Cope.
Mike
http://injoke.org
I pay around $50 a month for Comcast cable. Assuming that each series costs an average of 10 million a season, and I only watch shows that appeal to at least 1 million viewers who are also willing to pay, that means I can purchase rights for private viewing of a series of shows for $10. I could afford to pick 60 series a year to sponsor for the same cost as my cable. Commercial free and delivered over my broadband. Why get it any other way?
http://injoke.org/index.php?title=privately_funded _media
What they do seem to do rather effectively, is fuel price races to the bottom in every field they enter. This can't be good for any community. I would rather pay a few dollars more to buy a product from a local business, or a local geek to provide the same product or service.
http://injoke.org/index.php?title=daily_show_wal_m art_piece
Hogwash.
If this is the case, and the relationship between Checkfree and Intuit is the only reason this is happening, why would Intuit also disable:
"...downloading financial data from your bank, credit union, credit card, brokerage, 401(k) or mutual fund accounts; downloading stock quotes, news headlines and other financial information into Quicken; uploading portfolio information from Quicken to Quicken.com; and access to the investing features on Quicken.com including portfolio tracking, any watch lists you have created, One-Click Scorecard(TM), Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator."
Intuit is clearly attempting to churn theirsales by making prior releases of their software unusable. Worse, they are doing it by removing features from the application which purchasers of the software did not know were 'time-limited'.
More here.
In his first test Tesla burned out a generator at Colorado Springs. Later there were claims that he succeeded in lighting 200 incandescent bulbs at a distance of 25 miles. But this was never confirmed. Tesla never published a thorough description of his work. Even if the thing worked it's difficult to see how you'd avoid wasting huge amounts of energy.
Still, if Splashpower is successful, I'd like it. Resting my sonicare toothruch in that smooth plastic base rather than fumbling for a power jack in the morning is great.
slash = Schrägstrich
dot = Punkt
so...
Schrägstrichpunkten?
I wanted to test Microsoft's program, so I ran Spybot first, rebooted and ran Anti-Spybot.
Their software detected 28 types of threats that Spyware missed. 1 memory process, 70 files and 328 registry keys that we infecting my system.
...is here.
Part 1: http://www.tomshardware.com.nyud.net:8090/cpu/2004 1220/index.html4 1221/index.html
Part 2: http://www.tomshardware.com.nyud.net:8090/cpu/200
In addition to taking donated equipment and recycling hazardous components like monitors and laptop batteries, they also provide free training, and a program to provide free PCs running Mandrake to people in the community.
Mike Graham
http://www.mikegraham.net
It also occurs to me that the main issue with the royalty payments must be with the ability to record the stream, and the possibility that the stream is close to CD quality. From the beginning, I thought a solution would be to dilute the quality of the broadcast to radio quality (less than 96 kbits) or to deliver the content as 3WK does, and deliver a high quality mono broadcast.
Typically, I use webcasted music to be exposed to new bands and genres, and I don't see how the music industry could be opposed to that. Sheesh.
mikegraham.net
Of course, they don't provide that information online, but a Google search for smith@turner.com reveals their naming scheme as [firstname].[lastname]@turner.com.
i on /turner_broadcasting.adp provides the names of the executive board.
http://www.aoltimewarner.com/corporate_informat
I sent the following email: (These accounts did not bounce)
Jamie.Kellner@turner.com, Walter.Isaacson@turner.com, Garth.Ancier@turner.com, Brad.Turell@turner.com, Jack.Wakshlag@turner.com, Stan.Kasten@turner.com, Louise.Sams@turner.com, Larry.Goodman@turner.com, Mark.Lazarus@turner.com, David.Levy@turner.com
In reading the July 15th issue of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the article titled "New Breed Ff TV Ads Popping Up" caught my attention. It describes a new method of advertising your network is considering whereby advertisements will 'pop-up' during the show in the corner of the screen.
As a viewer, I can tell you that this is not an advertising method I find desirable. I think it will be obtrusive and disruptive to my enjoyment of your programming. So much so, that it would be pointless for me to continue to endure those commercials, and I would not tune in to TNT anymore.
In fact, I find this poor idea so distasteful, I would likely remove TNT from the channel search of my television.
I am sure that I share this opinion with many television viewers, and I hope that our opinions matter to you.
Please do not display 'pop-up' ads on your network.
Sincerely,
Mike XXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Rd.
Portland, OR XXXXX
XXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
You know, it might be my general mood just now, but after reading Greenspun's job offer, I am outraged.
He'll be flying around in a quarter million dollar airplane, while some schmoe schleps around driving his books, bicycles and dog bed for thousands of miles all summer long? Not only that, but when he's around, his serf will sleep in a tent outside?
Sounds like a great way to spend the summer. What a jackass.
Frankly, I was impressed by ATT's speedy recovery of my service after @Home made the decision to drop me as a customer. I was down fo less than 24 hours (05:23 PST Sat. - 03:12 PST Sun.) and their automated telephone notification was great. Of course, the Portland and Seattle areas were restored first, so YMMV.
The only critique I might have is that casual internet users, like the guy that I ran into at CompUSA on Sun while I was buying blank CD's. He had no idea what to do, or where to check. All he knew was taht in the morning his connection was gone, and that @Home was in bankruptcy.
But, typically, casual users of all sorts pay the price when things break down, whether their broadband connection breaks down, or their car leaves them stranded on the side of the road.
THe problem we had with using text in our navigation bar was the length of the txt in other languages.
For example, "Locations" on the navigation bar is great in English, but in German, the legth becomes quite a bit longer, and can make the rest of the text shift off of the 800 X 600 page.
We opted to use graphics that would be meaningful across cultures (a Newspaper indicating news) and a mouseover event that causes the text of the icons meaning to appear centered below the bar.
Of course, the text is context sensitive to the prefered language of the browser.
Mike.