Tag: author

Here’s To The Phone Phreaks

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

I swapped emails today with Dave Kulka in Burbank. We first met when we were in our teens–a story in and of itself since I lived in Flushing, NY while Dave was a resident of Greenbrae in Marin County just north of San Francisco. Dave’s company masterfully repairs and restores older audio equipment used in recording studios.

record_groove.jpgFor years Dave was a mastering engineer. That’s the person who supervises the process of taking a song from recording to the lacquer masters that produce phonograph records. Knowing Dave, his records on your turntable sounded just like the session sounded in the studio. He is detail oriented.

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

In return Dave sent me a link about “phone phreaks” and a book being written about them. These were people who:

listened to the clicks and clunks and beeps and boops to figure out how calls were routed. They read obscure telephone company technical journals. They learned how to impersonate operators and other telephone company personnel. They dug through telephone company trash bins to find “secret” documents. They solved puzzles.

model 500 phone.jpgOK–that’s a little on the romantic side, but not incredibly far off base.

The author claims there are still phone phreaks today, but why? Forty years ago making long distance calls was expensive!

There were different rates in effect for different times of the day. People would wait to make calls after 7:00 PM or after 11:00 PM when the rates fell. A daytime call was outrageously pricey!

Nowadays long distance phone calls flow like water from a faucet. Most cell plans don’t even bother to differentiate long distance from local because there’s really no incremental cost in carrying either! Nearly all the costs are fixed whether you make calls or not.

This crime has been solved by pricing it out of existence. Isn’t that strange? That doesn’t happen too often.

The Post’s Snow Lover Hates Me

Does seeing what he wrote upset me? Of course it does.

I got a mention in Jim Shay’s blog from the Connecticut Post&#185. The entry is called, “Weathering the anti-snow people.”

I tried to respond there, but the website fired off an error message saying it couldn’t connect to its database.

“[A] promising period of snow and cold temperatures are in the forecast.

No you won’t get that from the snow haters on Connecticut television stations. At the top of the list is Geoff Fox on WTNH whose anti-snow bias is enough to turn off the channel as soon as you see him. Sorry, Geoff, I’m tired of hearing that B.S. of the time you spent in snowy Buffalo. Why don’t you just tell the forecast instead of your shaking your head and have that condensending smug on your face when there’s snow in the forecast.”

fluffy-snow-deck-chairs.jpgWe’ve got to get Jim a spell checker. Actually, even if it was spelled right, what’s a condescending smug?

He’s mostly right though. I’m not exactly anti-snow (can one actually be anti-snow?), but I am a snow hater. Not Jim. His blog is named “Snow Zone.” Duh.

He’s unhappy with me. I suspect he thinks my admitted bias affects my forecast.

If it were only that simple.

He probably prefers those who predicted 100 of the last 25 inches of snow! To them hope springs eternal. All potential Nor’easters become Nor’easters. That’s not real life. That’s not me.

My forecast doesn’t make the snow come. As Dr. Mel says, “We’re in prediction, not production.” The snow is a passive observer. It does what it wants.

My job is to be as accurate as possible. Bias be damned. There’s no upside to being wrong. I’ve been wrong enough times over 25 years to know I want to avoid it (and to avoid humanity in general after I’ve been wrong).

Does seeing what he wrote upset me? Of course it does. No one wants to read along as the author tries to put you down (though, as hinted at earlier, it would be more effective if the Assistant Managing Editor of the Connecticut Post properly spelled his words and structured his sentences).

Stuff like this comes with the territory. I do a better job dealing with it than I once did. Anyway, the posting is not as bad as it looks because he wrote enough specifics to realize he does watch!

The blogger doth protest too much.

&#185 – The Connecticut Post was the Bridgeport Post. Like many papers attached to a downtrodden urban center with wealthier suburbs (Newark Star-Ledger, Camden Courier-Post to name two) it changed its name. That might be good for the paper while simultaneously demoralizing for the formerly named city.

Comments And The Chinese Electric Car

No one, certainly not me, wants to be accused of racial prejudice. Make no mistake, it was disturbing just to be accused.

I wrote an entry on Gearlog last night about the new Chinese electric car from BYD. As with most of my posts for them (and here) there was plenty of me infused in the article and lots of my opinion. I am lucky that my editors give me latitude in that regard.

“From those fabulous folks who brought you the $40 Rolex watch and melamine laced baby formula (and pet food) it’s the electric car! Monday morning BYD unveiled the F3DM, China’s first mass produced electric sedan.”

Uh oh! I woke this morning and checked the comments.

“Why is racial prejudice so ingrained in the minds of the American culture? It is shameful that the author of this article thinks it is his duty to insult BYD and the Chinese people in general by opening this article with irrelevant and insulting references to Rolex knockoffs and tainted milk. Where does BYD fit into these imbecile ridicules?

Who knew? I told Helaine I was going to respond. She said don’t.

I checked back later today. I was being defended by strangers.

“The reference to a “knock off” is because the exterior is a knock off; just look at it! The technical advances are “inside” as rightly pointed out in the article. Get over it, I have (I’m Chinese). The author also took a good crack at GM too, saying its Volt is a “2010 dream”… why not have a go at him for saying that? I was in no way insulted or felt the article contained racial bias.

If you get ‘told off’ by someone, don’t first say its because you’re ethnically different, perhaps the person doing the ‘telling off’ does this to everyone, or perhaps you deserved it. If you still feel the article was refereeing to ‘stereo typing’ then we only have the Chinese government to blame for allowing knockoffs to occur so openly. “

Later another commenter came on.

“have you listened to any on the Chinese dialects such as Cantonese or even Mandarin recently? I’d say racial prejudice is pretty ingrained in us Chinese too. A lot of people I know still use “鬼佬” or something similar when referring to foreigners.”

Where do I start? Helaine was right. I would only have started a flame war. The other two comments have allowed me to rest easier. No one, certainly not me, wants to be accused of racial prejudice. Make no mistake, it was disturbing just to be accused.

On top of this what’s amazing is the reach of Gearlog. The site gets around 650,000 page views per month from every corner of the Earth. I suspect one or two of these commenters was from China. The world continues to get smaller.

The Other Geoff Foxes

I grew up thinking I had this name to myself. Another childhood fantasy gone bust.

I suppose I’m lucky to have GeoffFox.com as my own. As obscure as my name might seem, there are lots of us Geoff Foxes around. More than I ever realized!

There’s Geoff Fox who’s a newspaper reporter in Florida. Tampa Geoff, you’ll be glad to know, I specifically exclude your byline from my “Geoff Fox” Google search. Otherwise, you’d overwhelm me.

There’s an author named Geoff Fox who lives (or lived) in Brooklyn, NY. He owns GeoffreyFox.com. Damn! I could have had that too. To say he is a prolific author is an understatement!

Also up there in the impressivosity (not a word, but it should be) Dr. Geoffrey Fox from Indiana University. Dr. Fox is a professor (whereas I am closer to Gilligan) in the Department of Computer Science, School of Informatics. What exactly is informatics?

The most famous Geoff Fox is probably the guy who owns Fox Racing–well known in motocross circles. He could probably buy and sell us all.

This all comes up because my forward searching brought me news of Geoff Fox who did quite well at the Worcestershire UK Golf Club’s Captain’s Day. Good at golf? He’s no relative of mine.

I grew up thinking I had this name to myself. Another childhood fantasy gone bust.

Scary Thoughts About Space From Gregg Easterbrook

The Earth gets significantly ‘hit’ by comets and asteroids much more often than anyone thought.

“The Sky is Falling,” is an article about the threat to Earth by natural space objects. It’s in the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine; a magazine held in higher esteem than its circulation numbers would imply.

The author is Gregg Easterbrook, who writes and lectures about lots of subjects and is especially well known for his sports writing. In this piece he talks about Dallas Abbot’s discovery – the Earth gets significantly ‘hit’ by comets and asteroids much more often than anyone thought.

She (Dallas Abbot) began searching for underwater craters caused by impacts rather than by other forces, such as volcanoes. What she has found is spine-chilling: evidence that several enormous asteroids or comets have slammed into our planet quite recently, in geologic terms. If Abbott is right, then you may be here today, reading this magazine, only because by sheer chance those objects struck the ocean rather than land.

Easterbrook’s response: task NASA with this responsibility, replacing its now outmoded and valueless manned space program&#185.

Here’s a 10 minute lecture on the subject from Easterbook. Very interesting.

&#185 – Easterbrook and I agree on this wholeheartedly, but not on Global Warming, where I remain skeptical.

The Money Doesn’t Upset Me

What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it?

Matt Drudge, who seems to be particularly critical of anything Hillary Clinton does, has this bold faced headline on his site:

CLINTONS SHOW $109M IN INCOME SINCE LEAVING WHITE HOUSE

Wow, that’s a lot of money. What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it? I’m not sure I could, or would want to.

World Exclusive: 4/4/08 15:43:06 ET

2000-2007 Returns

Feds Taxes Paid: $33.7 million

Charity: $10.2 million

Her Senate Salary: $1,051,606

His Presidential Pension: $1,217,250

Her Book Income: $10,457,083

His Book Income: $29,580,525

His Speech Income: $51,855,599

That’s from Drudge too. I love the way he’s pinpointed to the second when his “World Exclusive” broke, though his link goes to (and his facts come from) Yahoo! and wire service copy.

I know his point is to upset me. I’m not upset. Yes, that’s a lot of money… maybe too much money, but we’re allowed to aspire to, and achieve wealth.

I don’t want anyone telling me how much to earn.

This is an equal opportunity pursuit. Presidents see their post-presidency as a time to make money. George Bush “43” certainly does. “41” does too.

From the BBC:

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers,” Mr Bush told Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.

What I really want to know is where the Clinton’s post-presidential money comes from. Who paid him and for what? That part of the story has not broken. The $109 million figure is sexier, but much less important.

Interviewed For New Haven Magazine

I don’t belong anywhere near that list. Speaking to me is the journalistic equivalent of slumming!

Last week I was approached by New Haven Magazine. They wanted to interview me for a story.

Was I flattered? Sure.

Of course there are always nagging worries. Why exactly me? I don’t want to be like Dr. Joyce Brothers, emergency guest when all else fails.

I asked who else had been featured.

  • Roya Hakakian, author, Iranian ex pat.
  • C. Megan Urry, chair Yale Physics Dept.
  • Hugh Keefe, leading defense attorney
  • Jonathan Rothberg, scientist entrepreneur
  • Peyton Patterson, CEO

I don’t belong anywhere near that list. Speaking to me is the journalistic equivalent of slumming!

Tonight, New Haven Magazine’s publisher Mitch Young and photographer Steve Blazo, came by.

I always worry how to answer a reporter’s questions? I’m not interested in towing the company line, but I don’t want to tick off my bosses either. Anyway, everyone can tell when you’re bullshitting to stay politically correct. Who needs that?

Years ago, we had an anchor at the station who was often quoted saying outlandish, foolish or even stupid things. I suppose she was sought out once reporters realized she made for good copy&#185.

She’d write it all off to being misquoted, but if you read the words and closed your eyes, you could see her saying them!

One question tonight came out of left field. Mitch asked, in light of Keith Olbermann’s move from sports to news, whether I’d like to make the transition to anchor? Keith Olbermann is not your typical TV anchorman. His career, though on the upswing now, has not been without setbacks and hardship.

I find what Olbermann, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and a few others do very interesting. Their job demands a skill set different from those employed by a totally impartial anchor. They also work within a structure different from conventional, and impartial, TV journalism.

I don’t think local news will be moving in that direction anytime soon, so the point is moot. It was still interesting to think about. It’s a choice I won’t have to make in real life.

I’ll let you know when the article is published… unless it’s incredibly embarrassing.

&#185 – Don’t ask. I will never tell. However, your guess is probably correct.

HDTV Or Not HDTV – That Is The Question

A confession. Back in 1968, my college radio station was broadcasting in mono. A fellow engineering type and I decided we’d change that.

We had no stereo equipment at the studio nor a stereo exciter at the transmitter site, but we hooked up a tone generator on the audio line and inserted a 19 kHz sine wave. The tone was too high to be heard over-the-air, but perfect to enable the stereo light on any radio so equipped.

Anyone listening to the station who saw the light probably thought we were in stereo. Perception is reality.

Another station I worked at inadvertently turned off our ability to broadcast in stereo (though that pilot tone was still transmitting and turning on stereo lights). There wasn’t one call of complaint.

All that happened decades ago, but some things remain the same.

A few weeks ago my folks bought an HDTV television. Then last week they got an HDTV DVR from Comcast. A few cable connections and voila – HDTV.

Just one problem. That’s not what they were watching.

My dad, who had hooked up as many TVs as anyone, did what he’d always done. And that did produce a picture. There was no way for him to know what he did coiuld never produce real HDTV.

Since my folks were watching programs that filled the 16:9 screen on their HDTV, and since it was being fed by their HDTV DVR they were happy.

An article at Audioholics.com points out:

A recent survey by Leichtman Research Group came up with the following interesting facts:

* Nearly half of the 24 million households with HDTVs don’t actually watch high-definition programs because they lack an HDTV feed from either via cable or satellite

* 25% of those surveyed didn’t even realize they were watching non-HDTV transmissions

As the author, Clint DeBoer, points out “Sleeping in the Garage Doesn’t Make You a Car.”

I don’t want my folks to miss out on what they paid for, so I’ve tried to help get the right cables in the right sockets. It’s not easy as all the connections are behind or under the TV or the wall unit it sits in.

Right now they can get HDTV… just without audio. The solution is easy, once the TV and DVR are moved.

Oh – I knew they weren’t getting HDTV when my dad told me he had to tune the TV to Channel 3 to see anything. Using the TV’s tuner meant they were watching everything in “SD” or standard definition.

Their DVR to TV connection was a single coaxial cable, instead of the five separate connections they really need. How is anyone supposed to know this?

Believe me, they’re not the only ones.

The Hoax

We went to the movie theater yesterday to see The Hoax; the new Richard Gere movie based on Clifford Irving’s retelling of his amazing Howard Hughes hoax. Judging by the numbers at BoxOfficeMojo, not many others went. The Hoax was #16 for the second week.

The Hoax is playing locally at Cine4 in North Haven. An independently owned and operated theater, we enjoy going there, in spite of its somewhat worn interior.

The parking lot is painted with faded lines denoting the spaces. I mention this because cars were parked in a somewhat free spirited fashion. I actually saw a few cars which were blocked, front and rear, by other cars!

The Hoax tells the story of Clifford Irving, an author down on his luck. He’s already spent the money from a ‘sure thing’ novel which suddenly gets axed. Desperate, he hatches a plot to write Howard Hughes autobiography.

Of course, Hughes was a recluse – speaking to no one. And, he was in the midst of troubling civil litigation, giving him extra incentive to stay out-of-sight. Who could possibly deny Irving’s book was bonafide? Certainly not Hughes!

I remembered a good part of this story. Those were turbulent times and the whole Irving/Hughes affair became a big deal in the press.

Toward the end, Irving (who also wrote the book on which this movie is based) implies he was actually set up by Hughes… a victim of opportunity.

Irving also implies Watergate might have been brought on by Richard Nixon’s paranoia over what Howard Hughes might have had on him – details which were released to Clifford Irving.

It was a little tough to buy those two factors. I suppose they could be true. My thought is, they were added by Irving to make him seem a little more sympathetic.

Richard Gere and Alfred Molina were effortlessly wonderful as Irving and Dick Suskind, his friend/researcher/collaborator. It is nice to see fine actors, like Molina, who aren’t pretty, get meaty roles.

The movie featured a strong supporting cast, including Eli Wallach, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harding. If Helaine hadn’t told me which part was played by Stanley Tucci, I would have missed him.

My guess is, you’re probably too late to see this in the theater. It’s definitely a worthwhile rental… an opportunity that seems to come closer and closer to the theatrical release.

The Good Story From The Libby Trial

I want to make comment about the Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby trial. This will have nothing to do with the verdict.

I wasn’t there. I don’t have all the facts. The trial was incredibly politicized, These are all things I’ve worked to keep out of my blog.

There was, however, one part of the procedure which struck me when I read an article in Editor and Publisher.

(Juror Denis) Collins, a journalist who has written for The Washington Post and other newspapers — and is author of the 2004 book, “Spying: The Secret History of History”– described the jury’s painstaking deliberations. He said there were several “managerial types” on the jury and they spent many days just assembling post-it notes in some kind or “buildings blocks” fashion. They did not take an immediately straw vote.

If I ever go to court, that’s what I want to hear – the jury was involved and thorough. It’s something I think we often feel isn’t there.

A few years ago, while tuning past C-Span on a boring Sunday night I had audio tapes of Supreme Court proceedings. It was a similar feeling.

I had no idea what the particulars of the case were, but I heard intelligent men and women pondering the facts with well thought questions and comments.

Cousin Michael, who reads the blog and who clerked in the US Circuit Court might write otherwise, but these comments from the Libby trial and my ‘eavesdropping’ on the Supremes, gives me optimism our republic is built on a solid foundation.

Or maybe I’m just naive. I hope not.

Stranger Than Fiction

Tonight was movie night. There are lots of choices.

We decided against:

  • Borat – conscious decision not to go. It just doesn’t seem appealing, though loads of friends feel otherwise.
  • Babel – bad reviews. Helaine said, if you hold a finger over the “l,” the movie becomes “Babe.”
  • Casino Royale – maybe later. Excellent reviews. I’ve heard it’s violent, which isn’t Helaine’s cup of tea.

We ended up going to Wallingford to see “Stranger than Fiction,” the new Will Ferrell movie. It’s not a comedy – at least not in the classic sense.

Helaine and I hated… not disliked, hated… “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” There are many similarities between that movie and Stranger than Fiction, yet this movie was thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying.

Will Ferrell isn’t the over-the-top obnoxious guy you’ve come to expect. Queen Latifah isn’t the over-the-top obnoxious woman you’ve come to expect (My skin crawls when I see her Pizza Hut commercials).

Dustin Hoffman has reached a point in his career where he seems to be only playing Dustin Hoffman. He’s perfect at that.

Stranger Than Fiction is “a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch&#185” – or so says the off screen, pleasant, English accented voice of Emma Thompson, in the movie’s first spoken words.

Ferrell plays Crick, an IRS agent from Chicago who hears a disembodied voice narrating his life. He realizes, he is a character in a book. Therefore, his fate is really up to the author.

As the troubled writer, Emma Thompson is more than equal to the task. Her character is troublingly off center with an emotional short fuse. She smokes cigarettes as if she had a grudge against each one.

This is more than a movie of actors – it’s a movie of styles. Ferrell’s apartment, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s apartment, the IRS office – they are all perfectly designed to reflect and amplify those who dwell in them.

Many of the scenes are also annotated with computer generated graphical overlays to reflect Ferrell’s character’s analytical mind. It’s a clever device and well done.

The movie is poignant and sweet. We both cried, though I cried more than Helaine. That’s not saying an incredible lot. We also cry at commercials.

I can easily see multiple Oscars for this movie. Easily screenplay, maybe Emma Thompson, certainly an Oscar for design.

We saw this movie at the Holiday Cinema in Wallingford. We’d never been there before.

The facility itself looked a little frayed considering how relatively new I think it is. However, lack of sparkling ambience was made up for by the theater’s chairs! They’re well padded and rock nicely.

This showing did have the distinction of being the loudest movie we’ve ever been too. I’m not talking about the movie’s volume either.

If it wasn’t people talking, then it was people moving around or just random noises. Maybe they didn’t like the show as much as we did? Whatever the reason, they were restless.

&#185 – The watch turns out to be a Timex Ironman Triathlon 46 lap dress watch. I want one.

Woody Allen Instead of New York

My dad didn’t feel well last night. He’s fine now… in fact he was fine by the time I woke up. But not well last night was reason enough not to go to New York City. We’ll try again Monday.

That left us with a full day to fill and not much to fill it with. Helaine suggested going to the movies – specifically Scoop, the latest from Woody Allen.

That in and of itself is pretty amazing, because Helaine feels there’s something inherently wrong with patronizing an auteur&#185 who sleeps with his former stepdaughter. Point well taken. It’s tough not to find that skeevy.

At one point I was enough of a Woody Allen fan that when I saw Love and Death and didn’t enjoy it, I returned the next night to find out what was wrong with me!

This movie was a somewhat predictable, mainly enjoyable, little film shot in London and the English countryside. A de-glamorized Scarlett Johansson was wickedly sexy.

I had to ask ‘who he’ about Hugh Jackman. Give me an “L” for loser on that.

The story begins with Johansson’s trip to the stage – an audience member called to be magician’s assistant for The Great Splendini (Woody Allen). While ‘inside’ the magic trick she meets the freshly dead newspaper reporter Joe Strombel (Ian McShane).

He’s looking for a reporter, but Scarlett’s a journalism student – close enough. She ends up the recipient of a huge story of murder and money. That’s the scoop in Scoop.

If that was all there was it would have been a cute little movie.

What upset me (and I’m using upset as opposed to bothered, because upset conveys deeper angst) was Allen playing his ‘standard’ character, now an older man… oh hell…now an old man.

I remember him with Janet Margolin in Take the Money and Run and with Diane Keaton in nearly everything else. He was nerdy, dweeby, unattractive, but always got the girl. In this movie, the only way he gets the attention of the ingenue is by assuming the role of her father!

Maybe I’m more concerned for me than Woody? There’s a tendency to use the lives of others as our own benchmarks. Even though he’s a good 15 years older than me, I somehow saw him as a contemporary.

All this aside, it was an afternoon well spent for my wife, mother, father, me and the one other person in the theater for the 3:40 PM showing.

&#185 – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The term auteur (French for author) is used to describe film directors (or, more rarely, producers or writers) who are considered to have a distinctive, recognizable vision, either because they repeatedly return to the same subject matter, or habitually address a particular psychological or moral theme, or employ a recurring style, or all of the above. In theory, an auteur’s films are identifiable regardless of their genre. The term was first applied in its cinematic sense in Fran

I Got The Poster – Sweet

My 16×24″ ‘self made’ poster has arrived from the printer. I am very pleased. It is everything I hoped it would be.

I wrote Scott Kelby, author of the book where I found the technique I used, to thank him for the idea. No response.

Now it’s time to frame it and the two panoramas I received earlier in the week.

I went to Michael’s, the crafts store, last night between newscasts. Talk about being a stranger in a strange land! They just don’t get a lot of male customers, without a woman dragging them in.

Since my panos are unusual sizes, I went to ‘build’ frames using the kits they sell. They had one, but not two, 8″ pieces. Stock should be in today and I’ll try and pick it up.

Of course they don’t sell the glass. Neither does Home Depot, across the street. You’d think this would be something home Depot would do, wouldn’t you?

There is a glazier pretty close to me, so I called this afternoon. They don’t have the proper thickness glass (1/8″ – but they could have told me anything), but can have it tomorrow. Last time I bought glass it was more expensive than anticipated. It’s still made from sand, right?

Hopefully, by sometime tomorrow afternoon, my first three pieces of photographic artistry will be ready for wall hanging. There is a pure, pristine, virginal wall (the right side of the hallway to our bedroom) which will become my gallery. I suppose I’ll go through my older photos, looking for more shots to print.

As much as I enjoy photography, I hardly ever print my work. Often, I’ll work on a photo in Photoshop just to see what transpires and then discard the finished product, holding onto the original photo file, but doing nothing with it.

Now I can change all that.

Watch The Gatekeepers

This might be a choppy entry. I’ve already tried two analogies and failed. How to explain what I want to say?

I’ve just read an article on c|net which points to an upcoming controversy. As video shifts from broadcast to on demand (and make no mistake, that change is happening) will the gatekeepers allow unfettered access if that access diminishes another part of their business?

Is that obtuse? Am I making the point?

Try this. Lets say you own a high speed Internet provider. It could be a cable company or phone company or other business. It doesn’t make much difference because they are all becoming the same business.

Your customers are looking to download video programs over the fat pipe of data you bring into their home. Do you allow them to download programming that you currently sell… or want to sell? Can your customers pull an end around on your pay-per-view offerings, for instance?

If you’re a phone company, can your Internet customers use the Internet to hatchet your POTS (plain old telephone service) package?

An item in the Sunday edition of the industry newsletter Future of TV.net, published by Broadband Reports publisher Dave Burstein, quoted SBC’s chief operating officer, Randall Stephenson, as saying, “We’re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.”

The brief item in the newsletter implies that SBC will block all video traffic traveling over its broadband network even if it comes from the public Internet. This means that SBC would essentially block video traffic from any Web sites that distribute video, if the content provider has not struck a deal with SBC.

SBC’s PR people were quick to say it’s not so. Then, the author of the original report actually put a comment on c|net, sticking by his assertions.

SBC’s comments are disingenuous. What I reported was that consumers would not be able to “access content of their choice”, nothing about port blocking. But SBC is limiting bandwidth the user can access to less than the speed of the live video on their coming service, and probably will compromise that bandwidth with excessive QOS, etc.

Whoa!

When an Internet provider in North Carolina limited its customers access to the Vonage VOIP phone service (which would eat into it’s phone business), the FCC quickly stepped in.

However, we’re talking about the big boys now. There’s a lot of money and control at stake. Actually, that sentence works better as: There’s a lot of money at stake with control.

I know this is a complex issue, and I’m not sure I’ve done it justice. Even if I haven’t explained it well enough for you to get every nuance, here’s what you should take home – People are currently fighting over the future of our communications infrastructure. It will affect you at home and at work. It will affect you in the wallet.

Global Warming Monkey Wrench

I am somewhat skeptical about all the gloom and doom of Global Warming. I’m not saying the theories aren’t based in fact (we do know CO2 is a greehouse gas). It just seems as if the calculations are overdone.

I would feel better if Global Warming proponents mentioned the positive effects of their theory along with the doom. Isn’t that what imparital scientists do?

Just about all the operational meteorologists I know are skeptics. Nearly all the meteorologists who are cited as proponents are theoretical or research guys. Us day-to-day guys aren’t quick to jump on the multi-decadal forecast bandwagon as long as we’re having trouble getting Friday right on Monday.

Today I read an article which again puts the whole thing up in the air. I’m inclduing this link, but with the proviso that I can’t/won’t vouch for the author.

This new article says the Sun is getting warmer. We notice it from space probes and think we see evidence on other plants, like the shrinking polar ice cap on Mars.

Astrophysicists are scratching their heads about what’s happening on the sun and in our solar system. Why has this so-called “Solar Minimum” been so active? It should be quiet now with very few sunspots because this is supposed to be the low point of the Sun’s 11-year-sunspot cycle. But this week, there was a sunspot called 822 that’s 87,000 miles across – the size of the planet Jupiter! Could it erupt with more powerful X-flares as has happened the past few months. Big flares threaten all the broadcast, global positioning and military satellites that now orbit our planet. As I’ve reported before in Earthfiles, the sun is not “normal.” Is it warming up? Earth’s North Pole and Mars’s South Pole are melting at a surprisingly rapid rate. Even far out Pluto seems to show some melting. Is the sun a bigger player in all this than originally thought?

Yes – on the face of it, the science sounds right. I just don’t know if the books are cooked.

It has become more and more difficult to fight the tide of Global Warming pronouncements. Not because there’s more science, because there are more an louder voices.

I’m curious how this article will fit into the discussion.