Monthly Archives: November 2004

Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl on the Induce Legislation

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I received a belated response today to an inquiry I made to Senator Kohl’s Washington Office on the Leahy/Hatch Induce Act (Kohl sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held a hearing on the bill this past July).
The Senator’s thin response leaves me disappointed in several ways:

  • Kohl uses the term “piracy” which Hollywood has artfully used to try and kill all fair use rights (except, as the Professor says, the right to hire a lawyer). Let’s think about Wisconsin constituents interests. I can’t imagine a vote for the Hollywood Lobby in any way benefits Badger residents.
  • He does not take a position on a bill which would outlaw the iPod and similar music players. I find that strange.
  • The Copyright Cartel is going for the big score and trying to ram a copyright reform act through the lame duck Congress. I would like to see the Senator take a citizen friendly position on fair use rights. Perhaps he should try some podcasts…

His letter can be read by clicking the link below.

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SBC Moves (slightly) closer to reality

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Customer choice, in small steps, gets a win with SBC’s announcement that they will begin selling VOIP services to DSL only clients in 2005. Up to this point, many telco’s have required a conventional POTS (Plain Old Telephone System or land line for local calls) be part of a dsl agreement. Some consumers get around this by paying more for DSL only service (like me; in this case, I can upload files at the same speed I download them) and using a VOIP provider such as vonage or packet8.net (which I use and has provided generally good service).

U2’s Vertigo

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Jon Pareles:

U2 is almost alone now among rock bands in its determination to merge lofty ambition and pop impact. With songs that determinedly blur divine and earthly love, seeking grace as often as romance, the band doesn’t pander to vulgar impulses. Yet U2 has no interest in being a hipsters’ cult band; it has always aimed for audiences that can fill arenas, where its music is most at home.

Data Mining & Wal-Mart

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Constance L. Hays takes a look at Wal-Marts massive customer/product database.

URRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.
A week ahead of the storm’s landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart’s chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes’ worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart’s computer network, she felt that the company could “start predicting what’s going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen,” as she put it.
The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products – and not just the usual flashlights. “We didn’t know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,” Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. “And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.”

What do we want from our elected officials?

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Reading Jason Shephard’s excellent “Robarts Gets The Treatment” made me think about what we should expect from our elected officials.
Here are my initial thoughts:

  • Act Professionally
    Debate is essential to our form of government. Our elected leaders should engage in and value substantive debate. Nothing engages the public more than this type of dialogue.
  • Use Data to Make DecisionsThere’s a reason that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office), and LAB (Legislative Audit Bureau) exist
  • Communicate: Tell the Whole Story
    Use the internet to converse with constituents.
  • Ask Tough Questions

Ruth Robarts and Kathleen Falk seem to be two local elected officials who are willing to challenge the status quo. Shephard is correct when he refers to Robarts as “Public Ally Number 1”
I consider Russ Feingold to be nearly a perfect politician. He’s idealist, yet has classic political abilities. He’s also very smart. Idealist in terms of compaign finance and local communications, political in terms of timely, political votes (NRA and Tax Giveaway) and smart (debates: where he shows that he knows the game very well). To his credit, he’s always willing to chat and ask questions.