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 Wednesday, July 2, 2003
Speakeasy Allows Customers To Sell Their Own Wireless Broadband. Found over at Glenn Fleishman's Wi-Fi Networking News, and apparently not yet picked up by any media outlets is the news that Speakeasy, the DSL ISP famous for (get this) actually being customer friendly, is letting customers sell their own bandwidth. Speakeasy already encourages people to set up WiFi networks and to use as many computers as they want (unlike the big name companies that want you to pay extra for every computer you connect). Now, accepting the fact that the bandwidth they sell you is your bandwidth, they're making it easy to turn around and resell your own bandwidth to your neighbors. You set the price, and they handle the billing. They also provide email addresses and other features like access to the Rhapsody music service. You split the revenue 50/50 with Speakeasy. While I think most people would probably just as soon let their neighbors use their bandwidth for free, it's very cool to see a company admit that the bandwidth is yours to do as you please. Every day, Speakeasy looks like a better broadband provider. As the big cable and DSL providers get more and more restrictive (while raising their prices) it's cool to see a company that is letting customers do what they want. Clearly, they stand to benefit as well (taking 50% of the fees!), but whereas other broadband providers would see this as "theft" Speakeasy is being smart about it and seeing it as an "opportunity".
[Techdirt]
A company that gets it. I'd sign up if it were available. I am sure that this type of business model will gain as time goes on. 11:34:30 AM 
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Historical Revisionism. John F. Irons is really annoyed that George W. Bush is trying to backdate the start of the recession to 2000. Of course, the real thing to get annoyed about is that the Bush Administration has done so very, very little to fight the recession:
This isn't to say that Bush somehow caused the initial recession (although it certainly didn't help that VP Cheney was running around in the country in late 2000 and early 2001 telling everyone how the economy was in bad shape.)... The important question is not whose fault is the recession, but rather what has been the response of the administration to the economic situation. We have seen 3 major tax cuts... each of which were sold as economic and job stimulus, but which in reality had very little to do with good counter-cyclical fiscal policy, or with the current economic problems. The result? Unemployment continued to increase and is up to 6.1%, and there have been 2.5 million jobs lost since March 2001...
As I've said before, the failure of the Bush Administration to take any significant steps to boost aggregate demand over the past two years is remarkable and strange. The most they've done is to lie and claim that their tax cuts are effective recession-fighting tools. But even if it is the case that there is next to nobody in the White House who cares about the substance of domestic policy, there are lots of people in the White House who should be scared at the idea that there will be millions fewer Americans at work when the New Hampshire primary comes around in 2004 than when the New Hampshire primary came around in 2000.
I don't understand it at any level--substantive, technocratic, or political.
ArgMax Economics Weblog: Revising History: Posted by John Irons at July 01, 2003 01:09 PM | It seems that President Bush is running around claiming that he "inherited an economy in recession." (See below.)
Just to be clear, the NBER declared the beginning of the recession to be in March 2001, AFTER the current administration took charge.
This isn't to say that Bush somehow caused the initial recession (although it certainly didn't help that VP Cheney was running around in the country in late 2000 and early 2001 telling everyone how the economy was in bad shape.)
It is also unlikely that the recession was caused by any Clinton policy - the recession was largely a result of decreases in business investment - and the federal government simply didn't do anything in the late 1990s that would have had a significant impact on the short-run macroeconomic situation.
The important question is not whose fault is the recession, but rather what has been the response of the administration to the economic situation. We have seen 3 major tax cuts - one per year - totaling around $1.75 trillion over ten years (and this is a gross underestimate since the cost assumes that many of the provisions are allowed to sunset) each of which were sold as economic and job stimulus, but which in reality had very little to do with good counter-cyclical fiscal policy, or with the current economic problems.
The result? Unemployment continued to increase and is up to 6.1%, and there have been 2.5 million jobs lost since March 2001. As a result of the revenue reductions from the tax cuts and the weak economy, the federal budget has gone from a record surplus to a record $400 billion deficit.
We are continually told that the Republican Party is a supporter of personal responsibility. The administration should not be playing the blame game when it comes to the economy, and should take responsibility, at the very least, for the ineffectual policy response and the current dismal budget situation.
The original NBER announcement
The latest update [Semi-Daily Journal]
A long piece but one I want to be able to retrieve easily. Pointing fingers will not solve the recession. Bush has had over 2 years to attack it and has been very ineffectual. I think they figure it will just take care of itself by 2004 without their help anyway. I mean recessions don't last for 4 years, do they? They could be in for a rude surprise. 11:27:02 AM
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Great husband? Thank your mother-in-law: "A new study suggests that good husbands or boyfriends are often the product of great moms. [...] Researchers interviewing 33 young couples found "significant" correlations between men's ties to their mothers and their partners' satisfaction with the relationship." [Reuters Health eLine] [Universal Rule]
Well, I know my mother will relish this. Not a big study but I will call it significant. 11:22:09 AM
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The Effects of Howard Dean's Strong Financial Showing. The mainstream media continues to assess the effect of Howard Dean's successful second quarter fundraising effort. The Washington Post reports... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
Some interesting commentary about the reshuffling of Democrat hopefuls due to Dean's money raising, mostly due to the Internet. And I just found that Gary Hart has a weblog also. Politicos conversing directly to a wide group of people is one of the huge benefits of a weblog. And, if popular, it should select for ones who can effectively communicate. 11:03:32 AM
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Busted. Richard Smith, who tracked down the Melissa virus creator and caught the hands of Microsoft, RealNetworks and DirecTV in the privacy cookie jar, now has discovered that the Blair administration has been lying about how its Iraqi WMD info got, um, adjusted. The background, from Richard: Back in February 2003, 10 Downing Street published a dossier on Iraq's security and intelligence organizations. This dossier was cited by Colin Powell in his address to the United Nations the same month. Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, quickly discovered that much of the material in the dossier was... [Joho the Blog]
This is a hoot. a governments misleading statements discovered because MS has such a lax approach to privacy. Many of us know that MS logs all sorts of information about who edited what and when. Apparently the British government did not. Smith was able to examine the Word document placed online, as anyone else could, and discovered four members of the British government who were involved in editting it. This was used in the recent hearing Parliament has been having and was cause for some interesting questioning. I suppose all documents will be posted as PDFs from now on. I love biter gets bit stories. This also illustrates how loss of privacy may be somewhat acceptable if it works both ways and we can observe the government as easily as they can observe us. 10:42:51 AM
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This is something I wrote to my mother about the Charlie Chan controversy on Fox. I thought it would be useful on my blog, after some light editting.
There is really nothing new about this. The Cartoon Network was going to have a marathon of ALL the Warner's cartoons. But Warners would not allow them to show several that had "inappropriate" black characters. Disney has re-editted Fantasia to remove similar stereotypes. It will never allow "Song of the South" to be placed on video or DVD. Spielberg altered ET so that the officers no longer threaten the kids with guns but merely hold walkie talkies. Lucas altered Star Wars so that Han does not shoot first.
I may not approve of all of these but in every case it was the copyright holder who made the decision not to offend people. It was not the government or an advertiser, etc. From what I have read Fox owns the copyrights for these and can do what they want. If that is the case, it is not censorship.
I looked to see what was available on the internet. Several leaders of Asian-American groups wrote Fox know that there were a lot of problems for them in these films (see NAATA which also has the response from Fox. It ends stating that they hope this can be a starting point for multicultural discussions and asks people to visit their web site, which I can not do. Maybe it has been slashdotted.). I have not seen anything that hinted at threats, simply informing Fox (Doesn't mean there were not any). Fox said that they then examined all the films and determined that some were really offensive, not that they were afraid of boycotts or threats. So they removed them from the schedule. I do not think they said they would never be shown. I hope they find another path.
What I hope happens is that they use these films to demonstrate what is right and what is wrong with them. They could do this with a documentary and some commentary. They could talk about Hollywood's approach to Asians, what was good what was bad, how things have or have not changed. I think reasonable people would appreciate this (The unreasonable are a minority in either case.) But in order to do this, they need to create them which takes time. So they would have to cancel the current showing.
Will they do this? I do not know but instead of everyone turning it into fight against them and us, instead of threatening a company, why not find some way to do both. The fact is, there is now more publicity about this than ever before. More people know that there was such a series being shown. I guess there is no such thing as bad publicity. Perhaps something will be done.
Being sensitive to the wishes of its customers is a good trait.Fox took the sensible approach, removed potentially offensive material but leaving themselves an out by encouraging further discussion. Perhaps further discussion will provide another approach. I do not think this is the end of it. We shall see. 10:23:14 AM
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I have been hearing more about Howard Dean the last few days, mostly from different links in my newsfeeds. I decided to check out more about him, particularly when I read he had raised more money this last quarter than most of the other candidates, something that was not expected, and that half of it came from small, online donations. He raised $800,000 online in one day!
Not too surprisingly, he has a website Dean For America as do others, such as John Kerry. The difference is what he does with it. It is more than just political hackery. It actually uses many of the tools we have today to create a grassroots program, to connect people in ways that simplify interactions.
For example, they are organizing Meetup For Dean events where across the country on a single day, July 2, over 50,000 people have said they will meet, celebrate and hatch a new plan. Here is the agenda that will be used at 580 cities across the country tomorrow:
• Plan one Community Service Event per month that your chapter will participate in to aid community&raise Dean's local profile.
• Organize a voter's registration drive
• Brain storming to provide ideas to capture votes of the dissatisfied, but complacent & motivate them to the ballot box.
How else could anyone organize a single event, happening simultaneously across the country, that has the potential to pull in 50,000 people? Even if only a fraction of them do anything more, that is a huge base for someone to start with. Grassroots activism at its best, all coordinated via the Internet. This fits in with something I wrote yesterday, about the Do Nothing Strategies. It said that grassroots activism is really the only why you get anything accomplished, because the organized groups all want to maintain the status quo. Dean seems to have appreciated this sooner than other politicians, who will have to play catchup.
Dean shows he gets the Internet in other ways. His site has a weblog, one that has its own newsfeed, something some popular weblogs still do not have. So you can get news rapidly. But like many blogs, this one is personal and intimate and really gives you a feeling of how excited the people working on his campaign are. And, like so many weblogs, you can easily link to it, add comments and even use Trackback. Being able to read the debate happening between people across the country dealing with Dean ON Dean's own site is just incredible. It is the old Town Hall meeting that Clinton used, except moved from TV to the Internet. And the Internet seems to scale much better allowing him to connect much faster with a wider group of people than possible simply through TV.
It will be very interesting to see what happens to Dean now that he is in the forefront. The big guns of the status quo will really come out. The DLC already has them on his hate list. I expect their attacks to be vociferous, but if they are not careful, this will not sit well with the very grassroots sort of campaign Dean is running. After witnessing how rapidly the anti-war demonstrations came about last Fall by using the social tools of the Internet, I will not be surprised to see Dean's campaign expand tremendously. I just hope he is able to stand the tremendous pressures that will be put on him. I hope he is ready for any dirty tricks or October Surprises. I just know that I am subscribing to his newsfeed and I will for any other candidate who provides one. 12:43:49 AM
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