Archives for November 2006
This literally drives me crazy
Thanks for visiting this blog for the first time. Check out the home page for the most recent posts, or the archives if you're looking for something in particular. Here are some of our favorite posts, which you might enjoy:
- The Moleskine GTD tabs hack
- No choice but to get things done (on retro computing)
- How to subscribe to toilet paper
If you like what you see, we hope you'll consider subscribing to the RSS feed.
Berkely banned nukes, now nanotech
Last week, the EPA reversed course and said it will begin to regulate nanotechnology, specifically nanoparticles of silver used in washing machines. Now comes word that “Berkeley is proposing what a city official says would be the world’s first local regulation of nanomaterials,” according to the SF Chronicle. I love the rationale offered by the city official: “There have been a great number of attempts to regulate them, and they’ve all amounted to nothing because of the fear of upsetting industry, which leaves workers and the community at some unknown risk,” he said. “It’s the unknown that’s a concern to us.” Someone recently explained to me that when pasteurization first became prevalent, many opposed it because of possible unknown health risks. Nanotech is something I plan to keep an eye on and maybe shed some light on the consumer benefits as well as the risks.Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Chertoff: We’ll have the 25-year-old interoperability problem fixed by next year
According to Congress Daily, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff “said today his department will ensure that the highest-risk urban areas have interoperable [public safety] communications equipment by the end of next year, and that all states have it by the end of 2008.” DHS has been under pressure from the incoming Democratic majority to do something about the lack of communications among first responders. According to the article,Without explicitly acknowledging the looming pressure for faster action, Chertoff told a conference of emergency response officials that metropolitan regions under his department’s Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program will have interoperable communications by the end of the 2007 calendar year, followed by all states by the end of 2008.
Chertoff said the department will give urban locations “interoperability scorecards” next month to help them decide how much money to seek in their upcoming grant applications. He did not provide additional details during his speech.
A Homeland Security Department aide would only add: “We will have further info at later date, as well as further info on the grant guidance.”
The whole speech is here, but it doesn’t really add much. I’m not sure what to make of this, but if the interoperability problem could be solved so simply, by just giving more money in federal grants to states and localities, then we would have fixed it a long time ago. As the Katrina Commission pointed out in its report, “Although some New Orleans and Louisiana state officials attribute the lack of true interoperability for first responders in the region to financial limitations, this explanation flies in the face of the massive amounts of federal grants to Louisiana.” Among other things, the interoperability problem is caused by a collective action problem, which in turn is cause by a spectrum policy that gives each of 50,000 public safety agencies their own (untradable) spectrum license and thus the impetus to build their own custom radio system. Coordination among these 50,000 actors is not easy, and I don’t see how more money will help.
Luckily, the Mercatus Center and Tom Hazlett’s Tech Center at GMU are putting on a symposium along with the FCLJ that will try to offer some solutions for the interoperability issue on Friday, Dec. 8. You’re intvited. Presenting papers on the topic will be Gerald Faulhaber, Jon Peha, Phil Weiser, and yours truly.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Bookcase ‘trap’ killed US woman
Via the BBC: “The body of a missing US woman has been found by her family, wedged upside down behind a bookcase in her room. Mariesa Weber, 38, is believed to have fallen over and become trapped as she tried to reach behind the bookcase to adjust the plug for a TV set. Her family spent nearly two weeks searching for her, fearing she had been kidnapped from the house she shared with them in Florida. … The family told the newspaper they had noticed a strange smell from her room but had blamed it on rats.”Alcee’s letter
Alcee Hastings’ 5-page letter to the Dem caucus is rich. “I was impeached and removed after I was acquitted by a jury in a nearly one month federal trial. It is amazing how little importance is given to this fact.” Alcee, an impeachment is a political affair. So is a committee assignment.Clubs collecting personal data?
Clubs are apparently turning to swiping your drivers’ license at the door. A device tells bouncers your age. What they don’t tell you is that your name, address and other info is also collected. “Joseph Surdo, a manager at KatManDu, said his club has built a database of more than 15,000 names in a year, but he stressed the information is used only for in-house promotional purposes.”New DMCA exemptions (plus iPhone rumors)
I can’t believe Tim Lee hasn’t posted about this already, but the Copyright Office has released its list of new exemptions to the DMCA. All around they’re pretty good considering how stingy the Copyright Office has been with exemptions in the past. Missing, of course, is an exemption that would allow folks to format-shift their DRMd DVDs or CDs onto other devices like PCs or iPods. Derek Slater has a round-up of reaction from around the web.Notable among the exemptions is one for locked cell phones. Wireless carriers will subsidize your phone purchase, but the phone you get is locked so you can only use it on one network. This exemption will now allow consumers to take their locked phones to a competing network who I’m sure will be happy to unlock it for them. On the surface this is great for consumers, but I also wonder what impact it will have on carriers’ willingness to subsidize phones. On the margin, at least, their incentive has shrunk. If that’s the case (and allow me to be a geek for a moment) then it might help Apple’s assuredly forthcoming iPhone better compete since many believe that it will be sold unlocked and without attachment to any carrier.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Mythbusters in the NYT
Nice NYT article about my beloved Mythbusters. Very cute quote by Jamie, who after saying about Adam, “We don’t even like each other,” and “We don’t hang out with each other any more than we have to.” Admits that “I find myself feeling out of balance or awkward without him there to bounce things off of.”Larry David interview
Here’s video of a one hour interview with Larry David on The NYT’s “Arts & Leisure Weekend” program. He goes into detail about his writing process and the origin of many Curb and Seinfeld storylines and gags.More piling on Zune
According to this ZDNet report, the Zune is not compatible with Vista, Microsoft’s much-touted (and much-delayed) new version of Windows. Hilarious. An MS veep says they’ll have a patch before the Vista retail rollout. But seeing as Vista itself is several years late, I wouldn’t bet my music library on it. And here’s a video of the Zune making it’s debut on CNN’s morning show. Best recap is from Gary Stein: “I watched CNN this morning and Soledad O’Brien literally interrupted the tech-biz reporter, who was talking about the Zune, to extoll the virtues of her new, $70 iPod Shuffle. The next time the story came through the cycle, she had gotten her iPod out of her office and demonstrated how cool it was that you could clip it, and essentially un-sold the Zune, and pitched the iPod.”Senators Tackle Competition In Sports Programming
According to the National Journal today, Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy, the present and future chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are concerned about DirecTV’s “Sunday Ticket” arrangement with the NFL, which might abridge every American’s constitutionally protected right to watch any football game they want for free. “My concern is restrictive policies which are going to require people to pay a lot more money to see the games,” Specter told reporters. “The recent migration by the National Football League away from free, over-the-air television for transmitting NFL games to the public concerns some fans,” Leahy wrote in a statement. I’m glad this is what the senate is now working on.Oh, the legal cites they are a-changin’
A new research paper finds the top ten musicians cited in the legal literature. Bob Dylan takes the top spot with 186 citations, followed by The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen. The author confesses, “I never asked anyone why they do it, but I think it is because it is fun to do and they’re bored.” I can attest to that. I always try to title my law review articles after 80s songs or lyrics (”Relax, Don’t Do It: Why RFID Privacy Concerns Are Exaggerated and Legislation Is Premature,” “Video Killed the Franchise Star: The Consumer Cost of Cable Franchising and Policy Alternatives,” and the forthcoming, “Sending Out an S.O.S.: Public Safety Communications Interoperability as a Collective Action Problem.”) In my RFID paper I also cite Ice-T’s Don’t Hate the Playa to illustrate a point.
“Although [the study’s author, Alex B. Long,] finds a few occasions when the lyrics work, Long mostly criticizes the use of lyrics because ‘legal writing is easy, comedy is hard.’ He cites many occasions when it feels like the author is stretching by using the lyrics or ‘reaching for a way to plug a favorite artist.’” Yeah, legal writing sure seems easy for him. Hat tip Bridget.
The House that Rahm Built
Having lost the idealism that first brought me to Washington, politics to me are entertainment, like sports or reality TV. There are some characters that I love to watch because they are great at what they do, regardless of their politics. In fact, some of my favorites are Dems, including Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden. Another of my favorites is Rahm Emanuel, who is just political, leaving ideology in a second tier. This weekend the Chicago Tribune ran a great nine-page profile of Emanuel. “During the past year, the Tribune had exclusive access to the strategy sessions, private fundraisers and other moments that shaped this victory. The newspaper agreed not to print any of the details until after the election. Now that the votes have been counted, the story of how Emanuel helped end an era of Republican rule can be told.” The piece is a love note, but pretty entertaining, which is what it’s all about.Fraternity boys sue Borat
The RV frat boys from Borat who made racist and sexist remarks on camera are suing for “loss of reputation” among other things. When I saw the movie I couldn’t believe the things they were saying and I thought to myself, they deserve everything that’s coming to them. They now claim they only made those remarks because they were duped into thinking the film would only be shown outside the U.S. So I guess they still meant everything they said. Also, here’s a story about the woman who hosted the dinner party from the movie. Sure, it’s hard not to feel bad for her and her guests, but to my point about condescension, she repeatedly refers to “American toilet training.” What’s American toilet training?Mossberg and Pogue on the Zune
Two of the most popular tech columnists, the NYT’s David Pogue and the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg, each smacked Microsoft’s new Zune music player in reviews today. I’ve already given five reasons why Zune won’t topple the iPod. Here are a couple more. Mossberg: “The hardware feels rushed and incomplete. It is 60% larger and 17% heavier than the comparable iPod.” Pogue: “What looks like an iPod scroll wheel, though, is a fakeout. It doesn’t turn, and it’s not touch-sensitive. Instead, it’s just four buttons hidden under the compass points of a plastic ring.” And my personal favorite reason, the Zune has no podcast management or audiobook capability.We support your war of terror!
Writer Melik Kaylan has an op-ed in the WSJ today about the Borat movie. (I’m convinced Kaylan only wrote the article so he could use the word “coprophagy,” which I had to look up, but that’s another story.) The article criticizes Borat née Sacha Baron Cohen for his “bullying nihilism.” Kaylen first immunizes himself by writing that “Mr. Cohen has made it uncomfortable for anyone to declare publicly their dislike of Borat without sounding like the enemy of fun[.]” If you criticize Kaylen’s view, then you’re being a bully, too, or worse, a sheep. I’ll take my chances. I can certainly understand how folks with conservative sensibilities could find Borat crude and unfunny. But Cohen is as much a nihilist bully as Allen Funt was. Bonus: Russia bans the Borat movie.Best. Photo. Ever.
Via What Do I Know:
IP Chairman Boucher?
WIlliam Patry writes today about what the election could mean for copyright. Bottom line, either Howard Berman or Rick Boucher will take over the IP subcommittee in the House, and Patry thinks there’s a good chance it will be Boucher. Boucher is no friend of the DMCA and seems to understand fair use.Mr. Boucher is viewed by content owners as generally less sympathetic to their interests, although I would phrase the matter quite differently. Mr. Berman will always play an important role in the House on IP matters even if he is not chair of the subcommittee. In the past, he has taken great interest in international issues, and that may be the way he goes. The idea that he would pass on a different chairmanship solely at the urging of content owners is an idea that doesn’t reflect Mr. Berman’s overall interests or his role as a member of Congress. This isn’t to say he won’t take the IP subcommittee, it is only to say that I doubt the matter is as settled as some think.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
FCC turns down Cyren Call
Yesterday the FCC did something a little weird. One week after putting up for public comment Cyren Call’s proposal to revamp public safety communications, it rejected the petition but also decided to keep the commenting open. Quite admirably, the Commission cites lack of authority from Congress. What’s weird is that they didn’t decide to reject the petition during the three months they sat on it before putting out for comment. Also weird are the post-decision comments, which will now have another audience: Congress.In the new issue of Regulation magazine I explain the depth of the public safety interoperability problem and how we might go about tackling it.
In some parts of Europe, private enterprise builds and maintains the public safety network and sells interoperable communications capacity to the agencies there. A similar approach could be pursued in the United States. The government could allow private carriers to build advanced networks on frequencies that it now restricts to public safety use. Instead of building their own incompatible and duplicative networks, agencies and jurisdiction could purchase their communications needs from the private carriers. Because public safety communications typically use very little communications capacity, the carriers could sell space on the network to private entities without interfering with emergency communications.
This a warm-up to a paper I’m writing for FCLJ symposium on public safety interoperability that the Mercatus Center and GMU’s Tech Center are co-sponsoring. The event will take place Dec. 8 at GMU School of Law. Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien will be one of the panelists. Event details here.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Political Bourdain
I have a guest post at DCFUD plugging the new Doublethink piece on Anthony Bourdain as libertarian that I should have plugged here a week ago. In it, Beylen Linnekin makes the case that Bourdain is the best popular example of someone living a libertarian lifestyle today. Baylen interviewed Bourdain for the article and audio of their 40-minute conversation is also online.-
Welcome.
This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
Categories
Search
Presently Reading
