Link blog

I'm seriously excited about the Palm Pre phone. That's largely due to Palm's strong track record of open developer support. They let you download complete development packages, including a host-based emulator, for the old Pilot line of PDAs. This may be the phone that finally convinces me to give up my aging Samsung SPH-i500 (which happens to run old PalmOS).

Good work by TechCrunch, which, unfortunately, won't be as widely reported as the original misinformation.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) is scheduled to take over the Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee. This is awesome news. Boucher has proposed excellent things such as overriding state laws that block municipalities from creating broadband networks. Some states such as Texas have enacted that prohibition at the behest of incumbent telcos.states including

Oh my, this is turning into a total clusterf--k. Now the Obama administration is recommending the DTV transition be delayed because the converter box coupon program has failed. This coupon program is a disaster of the highest magnitude. It's not working and its bloated overhead is sucking away funds that could have been used for converter boxes. The article says that 7.8mil households have not yet upgraded. How about we just send every one of them a pair of coupons? Let's get some actuaries to calculate expected redemption rates. It might turn out that's the most cost effective way out of this botch.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project completes its descent into worthlessness. It started out as a revolutionary open program (open hardware, open software) that provided a unique environment for youngsters called Sugar. A while back, OLPC jettisoned the open bit and hooked their wagon to Windows XP. The consolation was that they would still pursue Sugar within a proprietary environment. Now, they are dumping even that. At this point, OLPC is just another netbook, competing against the ASUS Eee. Why bother?

The NTIA, the organization that administers the DTV converter box coupon program, announced today that they've run out of money. Starting last Sunday, applicants are being added to a waiting list. As previously issued coupons expire (90 days after issue), new coupons will be issued to people on the waiting list. This is an unfortunate turn of events. It's hard to imagine how people who haven't yet applied for a coupon will be able to get one in time for the Feb 17 switch.

EPIC FAIL. Microsoft Zune music players are failing en masse. It's distressing that a bug of this magnitude could escape into the wild. It smells to me like the sort of bug that might have been caught with good unit test cases.

As I noted in my blog http://www.unicom.com/blog/entry/577 "The Wrestler" is my favorite movie of 2008. We all know how professional wrestling is fake and they really aren't hurting each other. The shock of "The Wrestler" is the extent to which the characters bloody and hurt not the other guy, but themselves. According to this article in Slate, other than the fact that a headlining wrestler may not stoop to all these shenanigans, it's not unauthentic.

Article identifies some of the difficulties and opportunities online media presents for old-style access television production. Several Austin producers are identified. Article notes a big difference between online and access is that access television brings in a variety of viewpoints, both from the producer and viewer perspective. That's different behavior from online, where people tend to seek reinforcing viewpoints. That suggests access television may still be the best mechanism to fulfill the original goal of creating community discussion.

I've been watching the economy, wondering what impact the tightening credit markets would have on the burgeoning development in and around my neighborhood. Especially the reviled, giant (although less giant than originally planned) Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for the Northcross property. Unsurprisingly, the first shoe has now dropped, with this reported slowdown at the Domain, the flagship North Austin vertical mixed use development.

I haven't given up on this linkblog. I'm a little pre-occupied with Holidailies 2008 right now. I'll probably be posting more to my main site http://www.unicom.com/blog and less to here over the next month.

Ok, I found this very humbling. (It also reminds me of the experience I had reading G-E-B so many years ago: challenging to get through, but ultimately satisfying as the pieces fit together.)

Regarding my post earlier today about the lost tool bag during the space excursion, Adam Rice pointed out to me the "Asoh Defence."

What strikes me about this article is how often in the news do we see somebody actually standing up and taking responsibility for a serious ($100K in this case) mishap?

University of Tennessee has a $43.7 shortfall and is faced with cutbacks and layoffs, but at the same time the recording industry goons have gotten a law passed that forces them to shell out $9.5mil for anti-piracy programs that include "monitoring" software and hardware. I've got an idea: how about more cutbacks. Get rid of all the students and the priacy problem is solved.

There are two kind of people in the world: those who see a dire message in the US ranking on the ITU broadband penetration statistics (fallen from 3rd to 40th under Bush), and those who dismiss it. The current FCC leadership is in the latter group. Susan Crawford, co-leader of the Obama FCC transition team is in the former. This could portend a sea change in net neutrality and broadband policies. People are also reading the tea leaves in areas such as media consolidation, telco friendliness (the current FCC couldn't be nicer to them), and cableco friendliness (the current FCC couldn't be nastier to them).

While walking through Fry's DVD section a couple weeks ago, I commented to my wife that the studios seem to be doing everything in their power to ensure Blu-Ray fails. The pricing model seems all wrong to move the titles from early adopter status into the mainstream. Leave it to the black market to give movie viewers what they want. What's interesting here isn't that the pirates have cracked Blu-Ray (which they have), but that they've invented a new format that provides enhanced def in a more affordable form (albeit one that you'd play back on a media PC rather than a commercial disc player).

Researchers take over a 'bot network to determine the response rate of spam. It's inordinately low, which explains why spammers have to flood their messages so heavliy for the scheme to work. The results are interesting, but there are ethical concerns. I'lll assume CAN-SPAM labeling requirements did not apply, because the messages only appeared to be commercial. Still, I'm not comfortable spamming 12.5 mil unconsenting subjects.

I was impressed that the President-elect had posted such detailed policy initiatives at the new change.gov web site. I returned this evening to do some research on the Obama "Open Government" policies--but it's all gone. I suspect the reason is mundane: the policy content may have been a campaign asset which may not be transferred over to the government operation. I do wish, however, there was some explanation for the disappeared content. (If it really is a campaign asset issue, wouldn't it be a viable workaround tor release such content under a Creative Commons license?)

Austin just went with "single stream" recycling, so the issue has been on my mind. I've heard most of these but didn't really know whether they were true or not.