20 July 2002

Faces: Tom Freeburg TOM FREEBURG is a futurist from Motorola. He helped bring the Canopy system to market. According to Motorola, the Canopy system has been field-proven since 2001 with more than 3,000 units currently deployed in nearly 40 commercial customer sites across North America. It provides an excellent point-to-multipoint solution. Canopy virtually eliminates today's interference problems found in other fixed wireless solutions. The Canopy portfolio includes an independent community-sized Access Point with integrated antennas. Each Access Point has approximately a two-mile reach, although the range can be extended up to 10 miles with the Canopy reflector kit. The Canopy components are small, unobtrusive, easy to install and can serve a wide-range of network purposes. The Canopy solution can be deployed as a stand-alone system, or it can be used to extend the reach of wired IP distribution systems such as cable and DSL. It can also serve as a redundant IP backhaul for enterprises and service providers further reducing investment costs. x: Cascade Networks Tom Freeburg, director of engineering for Canopy Wireless Broadband Products

Sighting: Motorola Canopy MOTOROLA -- I'm looking at Motorola Canopy. Its developers overcame some impressive obstacles, including the corporate equivalent of being disowned before being adopted by Motorola’s Technology Center.  Canopy is a wireless Internet access system that operates in the license-exempt 5 GHz bands. The Canopy radio, which includes an integral 60° sectorized antenna, is diminutive, measuring only 12” high, 3 ½” wide, and 1” deep. Canopy radios can be used in several configurations: Omnidirectional: 6 Canopy radios can be mounted to provide 360° coverage (2 mile range) Point to Multipoint: 1 Canopy “hub” radio can provide service to a number of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) Canopy radios (2 mile range) Point to Point: a pair of Canopy radios can be configured as a Point to Point link (2 mile range with integral antenna, 20 miles with “high band / high power” version mated to a parabolic dish). Canopy’s interface is 10/100baseT Ethernet, and is only offered with TCP/IP. This is not a product that carriers will like, lacking support for telecommunications standards such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Synchronous Optical Network (SONET), and E1/T1 interfaces.) Other notable features of Canopy are that the data rate is 10 Mbps throughput, and that Canopy is surprisingly simple (as such devices go), assembled on a single circuit board to which the antenna is mounted. The board/antenna/connector assembly is then simply slid into and “snapped” into the enclosure. Despite its appearance, Canopy is intended to be used outdoors.

Stop Energy OPEN -- We're experiencing a lot of go-slow with the Open Working Group. In many ways, it's a manifestation of Stop Energy in action.

Dave Winer on Sabbatical SCRIPTING.com -- Dave Winer gave another interview about weblogs yesterday. "I said again that the difference between weblogs and mailing lists is that anyone can have the last word any day on a weblog. Five hundred people can have the last word. The stop energy is much lower." But Dave is pained by "the greed and intellectual dishonesty in the weblog world." He wonders if he is going to return to coding for the weblog world after he recovers from his surgery.

Resource: 30 Days to a More Accessible Weblog DiveIntoMark.org -- Mark Pilgrim concludes his totally excellent 30 Days to a More Accessible Weblog series of posts.

Pissed Off About Demise of Web Radio DOC SEARLS -- Part of the joy of the Internet is how the worldwide Web community enjoyed Web radio. Because of its spotty quality, I liken it to busking online. Right now, I am pissed off about the winding down of quality Web radio stations. It is not right that the RIAA shuts down community radio. I will really miss the CyberSty, now that KPIG's owners have decided that they have no choice but to suspend KPIG's live webcast in the face of the fees that would be due under the most recent Copyright Office ruling.

Disclosure on Search Engine Results SEARCH ENGINE WATCH -- Danny Sullivan explains the steps the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is taking to ensure online search results display items that are actually paid placement instead of content achieving high results based on their information quality.

The Ethics in Media WASHINGTON POST -- The New York Times was a very harsh critic of Enron's accounting manipulations, and yet the Times company itself had no qualms about striking a "newsprint swap agreement" with Enron that involved absolutely no exchange of physical assets and was disclosed only in the small print of SEC filings. The Washington Post editorial pages came out swinging against rules that "made a mockery of corporate accounting" by allowing companies to grant employee stock options "without recording a dime of expenses" -- yet The Post Co. was doing exactly the same thing at the same time. Asked about these double standards, the Times takes the high-minded position that its reporters were completely clueless about the Times company's dealings with Enron: "It might not have hurt to mention the relationship more -- had our journalists even been conscious of it -- but it's inconceivable that anyone will think our journalism was influenced by such a development." At the Post, chairman and chief executive Donald Graham has taken a more nuanced position, essentially maintaining that readers and corporations should do-as-we-say-and-not-as-we-do: "As everyone knows, the editorial page writes what it thinks is good policy, and if it varies with newspaper policy or corporate policy, that's fine." (Washington Post 18 Jul 2002)

Vodafone Sues Telegraph for Libel Vodafone is suing the Daily Telegraph for libel. There's nothing on the Daily Telegraph's web site to explain more about the case. The cached Google page has been scrubbed for the 27 June 2002 opinion column in the Telegraph entitled "The robber barons must be made to pay for their greed". That's libelous? You cannot take pot shots at Chris Gent's remuneration package without facing the heat? The offending column warned that the greed of company executives who enrich themselves while damaging their own shareholders' interests is a disservice to capitalism, a disincentive to investors and an invitation to government interference. In the original article, George Trefgarne, city editor of the Daily Telegraph, said that in our post-Enron era, we need integrity more than ever before: In the Noughties, many people suspect those in power tell porkies. Teenagers are especially cynical. You might think it rich coming from a generation that is itself pretty untrustworthy, stealing mobile phones etc, but according to a new survey in the latest issue of The Face magazine, around 80 per cent of 16- to 29-year-olds reckon you can't believe corporations or the media. The Daily Telegraph's poll by YouGov last week found more than half of all voters don't trust the Government. You could be forgiven for thinking the world is run by gangsters. Well, would that it was, some might say. At least they have standards, which is more than can be said for an executive selling shares in his company even as he knows the whole thing is about to go down the pan; or a dodgy accountant; or a spin doctor trying to stitch up Black Rod; or advertisers making wildly exaggerated claims; or the ex-directors of Equitable Life, who disgracefully tried to wriggle out of a promise of guaranteed annuities. [...] But government failure is as much to blame as market failure for this phenomenon. Leaving aside the issue of spin, our poor education system is not much help in the development of "social capital" - the human values and skills on which a market-oriented economy rests. But, generally speaking, the last thing we want is the Government sticking its nose in and interfering. Far better for individuals to take responsibility for their own conduct and dust down the values on which the market is, once again, putting a premium: honesty, self-restraint and personal integrity. Is your word really your bond? It had better be.

Dutch Judge Ignores Spam Case THE REGISTER.co.uk -- During a week when eircom, the leading Irish ISP, continues turning a blind eye to spam, a Dutch judge tore up that country's bulk mail ban. "The Judge reckons that in general, spam isn't too bad a nuisance and that it's straightforward to change email ID if it becomes an issue."