Category: Technology

Publicly owned networks are the key to universal access and healthy competition

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Becca Vargo Daggett:

Local governments have taken the lead in U.S. broadband policy. Hundreds of communities of all sizes are making decisions about how to best deliver universal, affordable access to high-speed information networks. Many are offered seemingly attractive arrangements with no upfront cost to the city. They do themselves and their households and businesses a disservice if they do not seriously explore the costs and benefits of a publicly owned network.

In this report, we highlight five arguments for public ownership.

1. High-speed information networks are essential public infrastructure.

Just as high quality road systems are needed to transport people and goods, high quality wired and wireless networks are needed to transport information. Public ownership of the physical network does not necessarily mean the city either manages the network or provides services. Cities own roads, but they do not operate freight companies or deliver pizzas.

Requiem for Magic Bullets

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Steve Silberman:

The golden age of antibiotics began in 1944 with the widespread use of penicillin in Europe, which saved many thousands of lives during World War II. But the first sign that this new era of easily treatable bacterial infections would not last appeared just a couple of years later, with the emergence of penicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium responsible for a wide variety of ailments, from skin infections to fatal pneumonia.


By 1950, 40 percent of the staph strains in hospitals had already become immune to the drug. Now a form of staph known as methicillin-resistant Staph aureus, or MRSA, which is resistant to nearly every known antibiotic, is responsible for the majority of tens of thousands of deaths a year from infections picked up in U.S. hospitals alone.



Bacteria develop immunity to antibiotics by rapidly evolving genetic defenses against the drugs or by acquiring pieces of DNA and RNA from organisms that are already resistant — even from other bacterial species. Bacterial pathogens that have learned how to survive in hospitals have an evolutionary advantage, because there are plenty of other resistant organisms in the environment from which they can borrow resistance factors.

“Use the Web, Luke” – Presidential Candidates Embrace the Web

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Peter Gosselin:

In choosing the Internet to announce she intends to run for the presidency in 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed to the burgeoning political power of the medium and offered a preview of how she hopes to harness it to her purposes.

In declaring “I’m in” the White House race in a video clip on her new campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, the New York Democrat did considerably more than simply appear before the cameras; she invited supporters to join an almost Oprah Winfrey-like session of give and take.

“Let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine…. ” she told viewers.”With a little help from modern technology, I’ll be holding live online video chats … starting Monday.”

By doing this, Clinton signaled her intention of using the Internet to shore up one of her chief political weak points, what independent analyst Charlie Cook called the caricature of her as “this shrill, raving, partisan, liberal lunatic.”

Hilary’s video is here. Take a look through the window – I wonder when it was shot? Sam Brownback announced on the web as well.

Charles Franklin looks at the polls.

The Utility of Asking Questions

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Ed Wallace finds some answers:

It seems to me that we might actually be standing at a crossroads of history, and 50 years from now historians will either be writing about the genius of our current plans or bemoaning our utter foolishness. But one thing is for sure. Hoping that things calm down in Iraq, wondering if they are going to get that oil law on the books and praying that the government holds and favors Western oil firms does not sound like a realistic energy policy for the United States.

Everything could go right for us; and the Chinese and Russians could still get back their Iraqi oil contracts, which were abrogated after we invaded that country.

Or we can develop a new energy policy for America. Raise the fuel efficiency standards for automobiles (mid to long-term positive results). Slow down the traffic on our Interstates (immediate impact on the amount of oil we use). Quit using so much oil for fertilizers and plastics and so trim all the waste those industries produce. Tune up our vehicles to maximize fuel economy. And determine whether General Motors’ series hybrid electric is credible, and figure the odds of Detroit’s inventing the lithium-ion batteries that would make the Chevrolet Volt feasible. The subsequent fall in the price of oil would deprive many who detest us of the funding their anti-American plans would require.

If GM’s 150-mpg Chevrolet Volt were coming to market this spring, would that breakthrough stop the 21,500 troops headed for Iraq? Probably not. But it would stop 500,000 American troops from heading to the Middle East a decade from now.

Apple iPhone UI Notes

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Bruce Tognazzini:

I could go down through the other “innovations” in iPhone and slowly knock them off. Yes, it’s the first cell phone with a visual display of voicemail messages, so you can randomly move among voicemails, etc., etc. However, such lists have been displayed, in an identical fashion, on enterprise-level voicemail systems and, of course, such lists have been a standard feature in email for decades.

The origins of these bits and pieces, however, is not what’s important about the iPhone. What’s important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs; that’s the genius of Apple.

It’s also speaks to the limited vision of the cell phone industry. Exactly why have we never had random-access voicemail on cell phones? We’re talking about hand-held devices with more computer power than the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. We’re talking about devices with screens of more than sufficient resolution. Could nobody think of displaying the messages?

A good friend often reminds me that ideas are easy, it’s execution that matters.
iPhone is a game changer.

iPhone / Apple Phone Tea Leaves

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Cringely parses Apple and Cingular as they introduce an interesting new phone:

This leaves us with the mystery of why Apple deliberately hobbled the cellular Internet capability of its iPhone, Apple Phone, whatever. As described this week, when the iPhone ships it will only work with Cingular’s EDGE network, which is its 2G Internet service that maxes out at 170 kilobits per second on not just a good day but on a day that is so good it never happens. I’ve used the EDGE network and it feels like dial-up to me.


The iPhone is this amazing connectivity quad-mode device that can probably make use of as much bandwidth as it can get, so making it suck through the little straw that is EDGE makes no sense from a user perspective. But remember that the parties involved here are Apple and Cingular, neither of which is 100 percent allied with user interests. Cingular has a 3G network called BroadbandConnect or “MediaNet” if you buy Cingular’s associated Cingular Video service.