Category: politics

There are many books I have not read by the great Ray Bradbury, but one that I’ve heard about on and off over the years was Fahrenheit 451. The title comes from the fact that paper catches fire at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, and a lot of paper–in the form of books–are burned in this story.

Prior to reading the book, I watched the 1966 movie of the same name, which adapted the book for the silver screen. While the basic story is the same, the movie changed several critical elements of the story. While I found the movie to be good, the book was far better.

Despite the story being more than 50 years old now, it holds up surprisingly well. We’re still waiting for the mechanical hounds, televisions are as huge as walls and people walk around oblivious to the world with contraptions in their ears. There is more entertainment than you could possibly shake a stick at.

While there are several themes in this book, the one that resonated within me the strongest was the rage against conformity. Throughout the book, society was immersed in televised and auditory media designed to delight and entertain, not to provoke any serious thought. The educational system of this fictional future society reinforced this by keeping children busy with memorizing facts and activities, giving them no time to stop and think.

The reason books were burned was because they promoted independent thought–thought that might make people unhappy. This fictional society saw this as a bad thing. Books were made illegal and firemen–with a long history of putting fires out–were charged with actually starting fires–namely to burn books.

The fictional “conformed” society reminds me a bit of the blogosphere. While there are many, many voices in the blogosphere, there seems to be a lack of differing points of view. We call this the “echo chamber,” and I could not help but draw a parallel to the fictional society in Fahrenheit 451.

I think the echo chamber, among many other factors, has dampened my passion for writing. The reason I am reading actual books versus the same old stuff in the blogosphere is that I am trying to find some new ideas and reawaken some old ones. Sure, you can find new ideas online, but I think a change of venue from the computer screen to a book is part of the process.

In any case, this book is very good. Highly recommended read. Even though I am not a fast reader, I was able to finish this book in the course of a few hours. It will certainly give you something to think about

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The latest post on the CTIA blog didn’t make a lot of sense. They were arguing against spectrum caps. Of course, they did nothing to directly explain what spectrum caps are and instead chose to use a bunch of flawed analogies to describe it.

In short, there is a fixed amount of spectrum available for wireless carriers to use to provide service. All carriers. In order to ensure there are enough carriers providing service to have some semblance of competition, there are caps on the amount of spectrum a single carrier can control.

The main reason this topic of spectrum caps is even coming up is because of the Verizon Wireless/Alltel merger, which was recently approved by all the government agencies. Of course, the merger is without some conditions, one being that Verizon has to give up spectrum in over 100 markets in order to comply with spectrum caps. Makes me wonder who the CTIA is really representing here.

The first analogy the CTIA tries to draw is that the spectrum caps are a bit like “setting a computer cap based on a 1992 computer’s specs – it would be like adopting a cap of 4 MB RAM and a 40 MB hard-drive and saying that no new applications can be written requiring more than that.” Some pretty innovative computing came out of those dark ages. Sure, it requires a bit more work, but it’s possible.

The second analogy: it’s like saying no highway should be more than two lanes. Unlike a road, where cars are generally a fixed size, one can always make more efficient use of spectrum. Look at the 802.11 WiFi. The original 802.11 specification–that predates b, g or n–was 2mb/s. The current draft 802.11n can go 300mb/s. The same can be said of the mobile phone networks themselves. AMPS–the old analog spectrum–required a lot of spectrum, CDMA and GSM use spectrum more efficiently.

The final analogy they use: spectrum caps are a bit like “restricting the number of coffee shops a company could have in a given city.” This is somewhat true, but keep in mind that there is a limited, fixed amount of spectrum available for all carriers to use. What the spectrum caps do is ensure that no one carrier controls too much of the spectrum to allow multiple carriers to exist, i.e. not all coffee shops are Starbucks.

Let’s take the CTIA’s position on spectrum caps to its foregone conclusion: without any spectrum caps, a single carrier could conceivably control all of the spectrum in a given market. Given there is only a fixed amount of spectrum available for mobile telephony, spectrum caps ensure it is possible for multiple providers to provide service in any given area. So how is lifting the spectrum caps helping competition exactly?

I will agree this is not the most optimal solution, but while I tend to think universal service is important, I think that mandate can be filled without lifting the spectrum caps,thus preserving competition. What do you think?

I have never understood why one needs to change the clock twice a year to “save daylight.” You have the same amount of daylight, you’re just timeshifting it. You’re not saving it.

I was lucky enough to live in Hawaii for a few years. One of the benefits of living there, besides the fact my allergies were a non-issue, was that there was no Daylight Saving Time. I didn’t have to change the clocks twice a year. Time just was.

And that’s the way it should be. Especially since we can’t agree on when to do it. Since I’ve been alive, the Daylight Saving rules have changed twice, and yes I was old enough to be conscious of both changes

Different countries have different rules, of course. Some sensible countries like Japan and China don’t bother with this Daylight Saving rubbish. Let’s just enact permanent Daylight Saving Time and get on with it!

If you’re a Mac or Linux person and you want to run Windows apps without a Windows license, then the folks at Codeweavers have a deal for you. Today–and today only–until midnight GMT-5, you can get your own, fully functional copy of Codeweavers Crossover Linux or Mac for free.

Why are they doing this? It was a publicity stunt. The folks at Codeweavers challenged George Bush to do something to improve our lot in his last months of his presidency. Whether he was ultimately responsible for gas prices plummeting a buck over the past month or not is irrelevant, but the folks at Codeweavers saw that one of their goals was meant and they are keeping to their word.

The Codeweavers Crossover product is a commercial version of Wine, which is an open-source project that allows Windows executables to run on non-Windows systems. It’s not perfect, since it is a cleanroom implementation of the Windows API and they haven’t got bug-for-bug compatibility yet. However, it does run some specific applications like Microsoft Office reasonably well. It also runs Internet Explorer, which is useful in and of itself.

The main thing you get with Crossover is a much nicer installation process for Windows applications. It knows about the most common applications and is able to configure itself for an optimal installation. It makes the application installation process a bit easier.

The other amazing part about about this is that you also get a year of support with this freebie. This entitles you to technical support as well as a year of updates on the product. Quite righteous!

While I am known not to agree with the CTIA on a great many things, I do like to point out when I think they’re going in the right direction. A recent post talks about a problem that all consumers face on some level–poor coverage.

In many cases, poor coverage can be tracked to one thing and one thing only: a lack of towers. Mobile network operators spend years trying to get approval from local authorities–even in cases where no new towers are being built! There’s no reason for approvals to take that long.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 actually addresses this problem already, but there are loopholes in the laws that are being exploited by some municipalities to restrict the building of towers. The CTIA wants four changes:

• Specific timeframes a state or locality must act on wireless facility siting requests: 45 days for colocation requests, 75 days for other types of siting requests.
• If the relevant party fails to act on these applications within the appropriate timeframe, the applications are to be deemed granted by default, unless the delay can be jsutified by the state or local zoning authority.
• Ensure that zoning decisions don’t have an effect that prohibits additional entrants from providing service in a given area.
• Preempt local ordinances and state laws that subject wireless siting applications to unique, burdensome requirements, such as those treating all wireless siting requests as requiring a variance.

You can read the text of the request here (warning: PDF file). It’s generally god stuff there.

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It seems like I’ve been ragging on the CTIA quite a bit lately, but these guys make it so easy.

In what turns out to be absolutely no surprise to anyone, the fine folks at the CTIA–the
industry association for the mobile operators in the U.S.–are opposing Arizona Senate Bill S-1010: The Cellphone Users Bill Of Rights. Why might they be doing that? Let’s see what the CTIA association president Steve Largent says:

The truth is that when you attempt to regulate a modern, high-tech industry as if it were a 1970’s public utility service, you wind-up hurting the people you’re seeking to protect. Just imagine the cost increases and customer confusion that would ensue if wireless carriers were forced to abandon their national calling and data plans, advertising campaigns, billing and customer care systems in order to set-up and comply with dissimilar regulations in 50 - or even two - different states.

Are they really asking for anything that would affect that? Let’s see what S-1010 is asking for: (more…)

Sam Sethi picked the wrong blogger to lie to–repeatedly. That blogger was Oliver Starr. Apparently, he hasn’t been paid since Blognation was started. Repeated promises of payment and funding were made, but nothing came of it.

Reading the comments on the TechCrunch story about this, you see a couple of the other Blognation editors in other countries “towing the party line” and essentially saying “we’re still writing.” You also have some back and forth comments between Sam Sethi and Oliver Starr.

Startups are hard, but if what Oliver Starr is saying is correct, he has a contract. You pay your contracts or else you suffer through the court of law–and the court of public opinion in the blogosphere. And that’s one thing us bloggers can do, it’s blog our experiences and participate and shape the conversation.

I’d love to hear fellow Blognation blogger Marc Orchant’s take on all this. Heck, I’d like to hear anything from Marc. He’s still unconscious according to the last update from Oliver. Bad things come in pairs, I guess.