Techdirt [link]
Florida Red Light Camera Law Doesn't Care Who's Driving: Car Owner Fined
There are an awful lot of problems with red light cameras -- starting with the fact that theydon'tactually decrease accidents or make the roads any safer. Most evidence suggests the only thing they're really good for is increasing the revenue for a city -- which is why a bunch of cities have broken the laws over the years andshortenedthe length of the yellow light to "catch" more red light runners -- while also activelyignoringany actual data around the cameras. Reader Gabriel Tane points us to a newly proposed law in Florida for red light cameras that, on top of everything else, wouldautomatically fine theownerof the careven if he or she wasn't driving. It's difficult to see how this is reasonable... unless of course this law has nothing to do with making drivers safer, and is, instead, a way to raise extra money for a city.
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Fight Over YouTube Videos Heats Up In The UK; Musician Propaganda Begins
The decision earlier this week by Google toblock music videosin the UK has certainly kicked off quite the firestorm of discussions within the music industry -- and an awful lot of whining about howit's "just not fair." Not surprisingly, the PRS folks have dragged out some musicians to kick and scream about howGoogle makes sooooooo much money, so why aren't they sharing? It's the same economically clueless argument that the newspapers have been using against Google. However, as Google pointed out, theyarelooking to share. The offer they made to PRS was to give them a significant portion of whatever ad revenue can be generated on those videos. PRS wantsmore than that, such that every music play would cost Google significantly more than it made.
It is, perhaps, no surprise at all, that one of the major complainers on the musician side is Billy Bragg -- who's been quick to make these sorts ofridiculous argumentsin the past as well, and whose manager, Peter Jenner, isequally unable to understandbasic economics. The problem is that they think that the world owes them moneyafter the fact. They both refuse to come up with decent business models, and then complain when others do -- and demand that those otherinnovatorssimply have to pay up.
It's the same story we hear over and over again. Folks in the entertainment industry insist that 100% (or perhaps 99%) of the value comes from the content itself -- andrefuse to recognizethat any of the value comes from the technology, the service or the community of folks using those services. However, their own actions show how wrong that is. If it's true that Google is "underpaying" the artists, shouldn't the artists beHAPPYthat Google took down their content? After all, according to what some of these artists and record labels insist, wasn't Google "stealing" from them? So, now that Google has stopped, doesn't that mean they're better off?
No?
The very fact that the musicians are so up in arms shows how much more leverage Google has. It shows that a significant part of the value is in YouTube. YouTube can survive just fine without the music videos. The musicians, on the other hand, aresuffering. That's why it's the musicians complaining. But that shows the very point Google is trying to make: Google has the leverage here, not the musicians. And, yet, the musicians still want to pretend it's the other way around.
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Online Publishers' Solution To Falling Ad Revenues: Bigger, More Annoying Ads
Thingsaren't looking goodfor the online ad market: reduced spending by advertisers combined with the fact that people don't pay a whole lot of attention to banner ads portends doom and gloom. While the first part of that equation might be out of online publishers' control, they're trying to tackle the second part not by recognizing that advertising needs to be engaging or interesting content in order to be satisfying, but rather by clubbing internet users over the head withsome new, huge and intrusive banner ad formats. Say hello to the Fixed Panel, which is a huge vertical banner that "scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls", the XXL Box, which is pretty much exactly what it says, and the Pushdown, the biggest of the bunch, which rolls down from the top of the page to get right in the user's face. The trade group behind these new formats says they are "designed to help stimulate a renaissance of creative advertising on the Internet that meets the needs of marketers by better integrating their messages into the fabric of the Web." That sounds like a lot of buzzwords, but conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the user's experience of these ads. These ads might grab users' attention through brute force, but will the experience be a positive one? It seems likely that intrusive advertising that gets in users' way will simply make the current situation worse by driving users away from the content. This is a further reflection of just howdeadthe captive advertising model is. Consumers have plenty of choices about where to get their content online; if a publishers' advertising keeps getting in their way, they'll move on and get content from somewhere else.
Carlo Longino is an expert at theInsight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces,click here.
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DSLreports - front page [link]
Three Strikes Fight Heats Up In France - New law a'legal monstrosity,'say consumer advocates...
France is moving forward with their plans for a new law that would force ISPs to boot users, if they're identified by the entertainment industry as having transmitted pirated P2P content three times (aka "three strikes"). With the new law up for debate this week, consumer advocates are ratcheting up their resistence to the proposal, calling it everything from a "legal monstrosity," to an "assault on public and individual liberties." In exchange for the new law, the entertainment industry has promised to eliminate DRM from most of their content offerings.
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Will DOCSIS 3.0 Really Reach Rural America? - Opinion: not buying the latest coverage meme
Since the cable industry's TV footprint extends to nearly 90% or more of America (the industry's independently unverified numbers), there seems to be a new meme mysteriously circulating that assumes DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades will soon be everywhere. That's the general consensus of a new Pike and Fisher report that claims that blisteringly fast cable DOCSIS 3.0 speeds will be "available to nearly all of their customers within the next five years."
That optimism is largely driven by Comcast's promise to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 to all of their customers by the end of 2010 (and 65% by the end of this year), and since Comcast services about half of all cable customers in the country, that's considered a solid base. Analysts then assume that all other carriers, includingCox, Time Warner Cable and soon-to-be-bankrupt Charter Communications will slowly deploy the technology to everyone by 2013.
Of course, nobody seems to talk about what drove cable into all of those rural American neighborhoods in the first place: those "annoying" local franchise authorities the phone companies just got done dismantling so they could avoid having to deploy telcoTV to less profitable portions of rural America. With fairly weak state-level franchise agreements now the norm, and no telcoTV competition that can't be handled by DOCSIS 2.0, what pushes cable the extra mile? That's where Pike takes time out of their analysis to lobby for cable stimulus funds:
In full historical context, this new argument that DOCSIS 3.0 is going to soon be available to "nearly" everybody seems both naive and blindly optimistic. The question is: how big will DOCSIS 3.0's coverage gap be? 15% of cable customers left un-upgraded? 30%? What's your guess?
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AT&T Outlines 2009 Spending Plans - $17-$18 billion, down 15% from 2008...
According to a new announcement by AT&T, the telco says their capital spending for 2009 will be from $17 to $18 billion, about two-thirds of which will be going to expanding wireless and wireline broadband coverage. Still, that's about 15% less than the company spent in 2008. The company also said they'd be adding 3,000 jobs this year -- though also noting that sagging demand in landline services means there will be job cuts in other areas. As for 3G, AT&T says they offer it currently in 250 markets -- with 2,100 new cell sites and 20 new markets coming online in 2009. U-Verse plans involve offering the service to 30 million living units by 2011, up from today's 17 million.
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CNET News.com [link]
Critical security update includes Windows 7 beta
Microsoft has also released an update to the beta version of Windows 7 to plug a hole that could lead to remote code execution.
Twitter as a brand-builder: Three examples
Twitter can be used to promote and improve brand recognition. Here's how it's done.
This iPod Shuffle is a disaster
Apple is known for offering products with great designs. But in the case of the new third-generation iPod Shuffle it made some strange--and bad--choices.
The Register [link]
Child offered for sale on Xbox Live
Cops on the case
US police have launched a criminal investigation after a child was advertised for sale on Xbox Live.…
'WALL-E' robot grunt obeys military hand signals
'Follow' 'Stop' 'Door Breach' 'Kill All Humans'
VidAmerican robo-profs have developed control software which will allow the droid ground-troops of tomorrow to be controlled by their fleshy comrades using standard military hand signals.…
Windows app store breaks old ground for Microsoft
Pitches 'honesty' not better price at Apple
Microsoft hopes to differentiate its online app store against Apple with the promise of honesty if not better pricing.…
Wired News: Top Stories [link]
Road-Ready Night Vision At Last
After some false starts, the automotive industry rolls out vehicles with systems that really do look beyond the headlights. But you'll have to shell out $100,000 for the car. By Bruce Gain.
The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
You may think of yourself as an e-mail maven, but a new study says when it comes to interpreting electronic missives, most of us are way off the mark. By Stephen Leahy.
DIY Tunes Turn It Up
Forget practicing tedious scales and studying counterpoint. A new generation of computer tools empowers legions of no-talent composers by making song writing a simple game. Commentary by Clive Thompson.
TechRepublic.com [link]
SolutionBase: Enforce system policies with the Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer
Group Policy can be the most important parts of an IT groups tools to enforce IT standards and manage access, or it can be an indecipherable mess in which you do not want to touch. No matter where you fall in that mix, it is a good idea to take a look at the configuration with the Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) explained in this article to identify your risks and configuration.
Fine tuning Microsoft ForeFront Server Security for Exchange
ForeFront is Microsoft s security solution for MicrosoftExchange 2007. Installing ForeFront is less than half the battle however. Afteryou get Forefront installed, you ve got to fine tune its settings for MicrosoftExchange 2007. Brien Posey shows how to fine tune ForeFront Server Sercurityfor Exchange.
Implementing Microsoft ForeFront Security for Exchange
You've seen the Microsoft ads saying how it's easier to defeat viruses using ForeFront than it is to kill zombies. Maybe. But just how hard is it to get ForeFront up and running? And what does it do? Brien Posey explains.
Science Blog - Science news straight from the source [link]
Climate change means bigger medical, council and property bills
Climate change concerns like melting icecaps, increased desertification, loss of coral reefs and the extinction of species like polar bears can seem a distant concern in our everyday lives. Little attention, however, has been paid to the likelihood of increased bills, through tax and insurance charges, that will be incurred as the UK climate changes.
Alistair Hunt, a researcher at the University of Bath, will be addressing scientists this week at the international Climate Change Congress being held in Copenhagen to present research which shows that the cost of climate change is going to be felt much closer to home than many expect. Alistair's talk is one of many described in the complete online abstract book of the congress, published in the IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science.
Working with the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP), Alistair has calculated the projected cost increases that would be incurred with an increased burden on National Health Service resources during hotter summers; the effect that hotter and drier summers will have on the rate of property subsidence; the maintenance costs of public lawns and the cost of maintaining climate damage-induced highways.
As Alistair says, "Through isolating particular consequences of extreme weather fluctuations, projected to become more frequent such as the hotter summers of both 1995 and 2003, and assessing the effect that these weather fluctuations had on local resources, we are helping businesses, councils and individuals to prepare for the future."
The hot summers of 1995 and 2003 are used to inform a number of the case studies of likely trends associated with climate change, as experts predict that the once-a-century temperatures, reached in 2003's summer, become regular English summer temperatures. Changes in temperature and rainfall averages also result in climate change costs.
The case studies look ahead 90 years and predict that the cost of treating people with heat-related illnesses will increase anything between five and nine-fold for primary care trusts; the increased insurance costs associated with property subsidence during arid summers will increase anything between four and 13-fold; and that both public lawn and road maintenance will see expensive hikes too.
Dr Johanna Schwarz, Editor of IOP Publishing's Earth and Environmental Science Conference Series, said, "Climate change is going to affect all of us and Alistair's presentation in Copenhagen is a timely reminder that it is not just tropical islanders or others in less moderate climate zones that need to adapt."
The case studies explore different adaptive measures, such as public health campaigns to provide advice about how to stay cool during hot summers, which could over the long-term reduce the health costs, and also looks at weather patterns that could lead to savings, such as the need for less road-grit during warmer winters, but the studies still forecast financial hikes that will bring the expense of climate change much closer to home.
Alistair said, "While the case studies might appear parochial and only reflect the concern of particular stakeholders such as the National Trust or the Association of British Insurers, the hike in costs will be shared, climate change will affect all of our wallets."
Roger Street, Technical Director at the UK Climate Impacts Programme, said, "Understanding the costs of impacts and adaptation is an important aspect of defining and implementing a viable adaptation strategy and its evolving adaptation measures. It is essential that we continue to provide up-to-date and supportive guidance that meets the needs of users towards identifying the costs and benefits."
Don't follow us, we're lost too
One positive development of the current global financial crisis could be the recent election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America, in the opinion of economist Professor Panicos Demetriades of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) World Economy and Finance (WEF) Programme, who is today speaking at the 'Politics of Macro-Adjustment and Poverty Reduction Conference.
"The theory that, to promote financial growth, the role of government has to be a limited, hands-off approach is probably gone forever. The new US administration could and should liberate financial institutions from these views. It will not be easy but less ideologically biased advice to LDCs would help promote global growth" says the Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Leicester. "What it should not do is to continue protecting the narrow interests of the US financial lobby."
Policies, such as financial liberalisation, bank privatisation and non-intrusive/passive regulation, have been prescribed to Less Developed Countries (LDCs) by the US Treasury through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These policies, the root cause of the current crisis across developed nations, have sometimes been forced on LDCs through structural adjustment programmes.
The crisis has forced governments in developed countries to once again take a leading role in finance, albeit reluctantly in some cases, by taking over major banks. It has highlighted the serious dangers of passive financial regulation.
"Developing countries should therefore take stock, as should the IMF and World Bank, who have been the key institutions promoting this set of policies." said Panicos "My research has shown that the role of government in finance has been pivotal from the beginnings of financial systems in Europe and Asia."
"Assuming the new US administration succeeds, we should see better, less ideologically biased advice to LDC's, to help to promote growth worldwide, even if it does not protect the narrow, short-term, interests of the US financial lobby in LDC's."
What about the UK?
Looking at the future for the UK, Panicos says. "I expect that, eventually, politicians in Europe and the US will realise that investing billions in banks and running them at arms length will not work and we will see a much more 'hands on' approach in future."
Individual banks, acting in their own self interest, will not address the massive market failures that currently exist. In a downturn, repossessions may be good for the bank but not for the economy, as they push prices lower and deepen the recession. However, a nationalised bank can be instructed to re-structure loans in arrears instead of repossessing. This course of action may be less profitable in the short term for an individual bank but it could be profitable for the banking system as a whole in the medium term. More importantly, if all banks do the same, it is good for the economy.
Research suggests that nationalising the greater part of the banking system and running banks in the interests of the country rather than the shareholders may be the only way forward. As Panicos points out "In many cases, the shareholders have been more or less wiped out so nationalisation may be the only way forward if we are to come out of this recession sooner rather than later. Governments must become more hands-on. After all, they have invested billions of our money in the banks, we will not forgive them if we see no return."
Nanotech coating could lead to better brain implants to treat diseases
Biomedical and materials engineers at the University of Michigan have developed a nanotech coating for brain implants that helps the devices operate longer and could improve treatment for deafness, paralysis, blindness, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.
Currently, brain implants can treat Parkinson's disease, depression and epilepsy. These and the next generation of the devices operate in one of two ways. Either they stimulate neurons with electrical impulses to override the brain's own signals, or they record what working neurons are transmitting to non-working parts of the brain and reroute that signal.
On-scalp and brain-surface electrodes are giving way to brain-penetrating microelectrodes that can communicate with individual neurons, offering hope for more precise control of signals.
In recent years, researchers at other institutions have demonstrated that these implanted microelectrodes can let a paralyzed person use thought to control a computer mouse and move a wheelchair. Michigan researchers' say their coating can most immediately improve this type of microelectrode.
Mohammad Reza Abidian, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biomedical Engineering who is among the developers of the new coating, says the reliability of today's brain-penetrating microelectrodes often begins to decline after they're in place for only a few months.
"You want to be able to use these for at least a couple years," Abidian said. "Current technology doesn't allow this in most cases because of how the tissues of the brain respond to the implants. The goal is to increase their efficiency and their lifespans."
The new coating Abidian and his colleagues developed is made of three components that together allow electrodes to interface more smoothly with the brain. The coating is made of a special electrically-conductive nanoscale polymer called PEDOT; a natural, gel-like buffer called alginate hydrogel; and biodegradable nanofibers loaded with a controlled-release anti-inflammatory drug.
The PEDOT in the coating enables the electrodes to operate with less electrical resistance than current models, which means they can communicate more clearly with individual neurons.
The alginate hydrogel, partially derived from algae, gives the electrodes mechanical properties more similar to actual brain tissue than the current technology. That means coated neural electrodes would cause less tissue damage.
The biodegradable, drug-loaded nanofibers fight the "encapsulation" that occurs when the immune system tells the body to envelop foreign materials. Encapsulation is another reason these electrodes can stop functioning properly. The nanofibers fight this response well because they work with the alginate hydrogel to release the anti-inflammatory drugs in a controlled, sustained fashion as the nanofibers themselves break down.
"Penetrating microelectrodes provide a means to record from individual neurons, and in doing so, there is the potential to record extremely precise information about a movement or an intended movement. The open question in our field is what is the trade-off: How much invasiveness can be tolerated in exchange for more precision?" said Daryl Kipke, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the director of the U-M Center for Neural Communication Technology.
In these experiments, the Michigan researchers applied their coating to microelectrodes provided by the U-M Center for Neural Communication Technology.
Cool Tools [link]
After a week plying a rented aluminum and plastic paddle on ascoutingcanoe trip, I wondered just how difficult it would be to make my own out of wood. The answer: not too difficult. As this book explains, making a canoe paddle is part woodworking, part sculpture, part whittling and well within the grasp of anyone willing to work patiently. It requires a minimal number of basic tools (consider that Native Americans used very primitive tools to make theirs). Naturally, power tools will speed things up a bit but they aren't required. Ten or fifteen hours of pleasant work will yield a paddle every bit as good as one you can buy.
Canoe Paddles guides the reader through selecting the right material, laying out the pattern and shaping the complex profile of a paddle step by step. Gidmark and Warren explain and illustrate each operation clearly and offer options for using power or hand tools. They include a thorough treatment of the history and function of this deceptively-simple ancient tool to convey to the reader the huge importance of proper paddle geometry. The book also includes twenty pages of patterns and specifications along with advice on selecting the right paddle for different types of paddling.
I bought this book right after using that rented paddle and returned for our annual canoe trip the next year with my own homemade paddle, which is now a veteran of four or five trips. I couldn't be happier with the way it performs. The paddle is a glue-up of ash, cherry and mahogany, but as the book shows, paddles can be made from commonly-available woods found just about anywhere in the world.
Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own
Graham Warren&David Gidmark
2001, 144 pages
$17
Available fromAmazon
Related Entries:River Ridge CanoeBuilding the Six-Hour CanoeKayaks You Can Build
The tools we're building to find, aggregate and consume tailored, filtered and hyperlocalized information are still nascent. My motto: register for everything, see what sticks. In the last few months, I've been hooked to EveryBlock, which lets you dive deep via street address and zip code, or pull back for city-wide look. The amount of data that's fine-sliced by location, neighborhood and zip code is just amazing. Beyond mentions of specific hoods in the mainstream media or blogs (includingYelprestaurant reviews), what EveryBlock does really well is provide a user-friendly, easy-to-digest interface for exploring public records: every building permit, restaurant inspection, police call, zoning agenda item and more. You can hone searches from a one- to eight-block radius around a particular address. And you can set daily/weekly email alerts, as well (I prefer a weekly update, but search via the site now and again).
There are handful of news-y aggregators likePlaceblogger(which I've not tried) andOutside.In(which I enjoy). Much like the previously-reviewedPopUrls, Outside.In gives you one place to go (or email/RSS) to monitor a variety of outlets -- in this case location-specific "news, views and conversations" slotted into categories like food, music, real estate. Good stuff, but a little different. With EveryBlock, you get the actual public records, which tend to provide the most interesting tidbits, for me at least. In addition to suspicious people alerts, car break-ins and violent crimes, I discovered a person on my block is intending to tear down a one-story, single-family home and build a four-story condo -- yuck! (Beware: you really can spend hours with all this data.)
The only catch: EveryBlock is only availablein 11 cities (as I write), but more are certainly on the way. If you're using any similar sites/services you love -- especially those covering areas EveryBlock does not -- please tell us about them in the comments below.
Related Entries:Google LocalConsensus Web FiltersStumble Upon
Yes, it is now time to get a Kindle. You all have likely seen the manyreviewsand hoopla around e-books. I myself had planned to sit on the sidelines and let some of this technology mature before purchasing an e-book reader. But when Neal Stephenson sent me an advance copy of the 960 pageAnathemin PDF format, I realized that it was time for me to get one. I had played around with the previously-reviewedSonyversion, but decided to purchase the Amazon Kindle (1st generation) which had recently come out. At the time, this was primarily because it had the widest available e-book selection, and it seemed like that would only get better due to Amazon's relationship with publishers (there are now over 240,000 books in Kindle format).
However, after owning a Kindle for several months, and having just upgraded to the Kindle 2, I have discovered the real reason why you want one. It is because you think of books that you want to read while you are reading other books. On the Kindle you have the unique ability to buy the book right then and there, while you are thinking about it, and it appears on the device moments later all via a free cellphone link they call Whispernet. This feature is one of the least discussed, and to me most useful parts of owning a Kindle, especially compared to the other readers out there. It is because of this feature that I am now reading more than ever.
The fact that the books are less expensive, instantaneous, and you can carry a whole library of them everywhere you go is just icing on the cake. The E-ink screen, built in dictionary, and search functionality are all as good as you want them to be. For those of you who like to travel light, e-books really excel; I even put mine in a ziplock and read it in the bathtub. So far I like all the improvements in the Kindle 2, my only wish is they could get an FAA exemption so I could read during take off and landing. Nevertheless, I made anew coverfor Kindle 2 with my laser cutter out of a copy of Green Eggs and Ham (pics below). My Kindle is now FAA-approved :)
[Note: Amazonrecently releaseda Kindle iPhone App. If anyone can report positively or negatively, please let us know in thecommentsbelow or via thesubmit page!]
Kindle - 2
$360
Available fromAmazon
Related Entries:Five Good eBooksSony Clie (as Reader)Digital Library Cards
