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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57053882010-01-19T18:50:20.801-05:00isen.blogDavid S. Isenberg's musings about loci of intelligence and stupidity.isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-61185804283969890152009-11-11T08:33:00.001-05:002009-11-11T08:33:23.838-05:00I've joined the FCC National Broadband Plan teamYesterday at blogband.gov it was announced that I've joined the FCC's National Broadband Plan Task Force. I'm delighted to be helping Blair Levin and his team on this important mission.

The Plan is due for delivery to Congress on February 17, 2010. Everybody working on the Plan takes this date very seriously. The work will continue after this; how long I stay at the FCC after February 17 is anybody's guess at this point.

Accordingly, (a) this blog will go very light on telecom issues over the next several months, and (b) F2C: Freedom to Connect 2010 will be postponed to a future date to be determined.

Technorati Tags: Broadband, F2C, FCC

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-64417066709324797442009-10-25T09:51:00.003-04:002009-10-25T10:12:18.112-04:00The long tail of live musicMaybe it's just me, but at age 60 I've stopped having fun at big-room music events. For the last decade I've been running on fumes; I've been to maybe three big-room events that were memorable. For two of them, I lucked into great seats. (These were Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie and Rickie Lee Jones with a tour band that definitely had found its groove; the third was Willie Nelson, Ray Price, Merle Haggard & Co., at Radio City.)

Meanwhile small room music has a much higher hit rate. But nobody goes. If you took all the nights of leisure time in America and threw them into a truckload of crushed rock, you would not find the 100-seat and under concerts until you swept out the dust. If music were conducted by the market's magic hand, small gigs would be Bye-bye Miss American Pie. Homo economicus would never be a musician.

Discontinuities are often where the value is. Earlier this month I went to five small gigs in eight days -- every one of them was its own little gem.

The first gig, on Columbus Day Sunday, was The Asylum Street Spankers at The Fairfield (CT) Theatre Company. The Spankers are an Austin-based neo-Jug Band with tight harmonies, imaginative arrangements, skilled players, a killer sense of satire and a joyful love for their craft. There were 25 people in the room, including the 6-piece band and its entourage. The rest of Fairfield County was closing up the vacation house in Nantucket. The gig began with a tongue-in-cheek announcement to step back, "so the people up here can breathe." It achieved a living room ambience. An audience member bought a round of drinks for the band in the middle of the second set. Audience and band played out the joke until the end; we hooted and hollered and stomped after the "last" number, all twelve of us who were left, and the Spankers came back and did a couple more.

The next gig was the following Tuesday, pianist Rossano Sportiello at the Fishmonger Cafe in Woods Hole. I've written about Sportiello before, and I've seen him twice in New York, but this was my first time at one of his locally-famous Woods Hole gigs. (It was my home town. I knew about half of the people in the room.) It was packed, maybe 80 people, for the first set; Sportiello did two long, panoramic numbers. You know the stereotype about how Italians talk with their hands? My jaw dropped watching Sportiello's hands as he played. In his second set, he did a Scarlatti piece, then Chopin, then he kept his right hand classical and brought in some Fats Waller stride with his left, and then . . . I have no words, none. The encore, a duet with his wife, Lala, a singer, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," was perfectly cut, polished and mounted.

The next night I went to a house concert in Woods Hole, by my friend and sometimes music teacher Glenway Fripp's jazz trio, "QuasiModal." Glenway's knowledge of music is astounding; he was making the most improbable piano things work in surprising and sophisticated ways. There were 25 people in the audience. Again, I knew most of them. I caught up with some old, too-infrequently-seen friends at the post-music wine-and-cheese.

The next gig was three nights later at the Riverside Y in the Bronx. This night, Rossano Sportiello shared the stage with two equals, singer and bass player Nicki Parrott, and Jonathan Russell, 14, a current holder of the Daniel Pearl Violin. (Daniel Pearl is the WSJ reporter who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002. He brought his fiddle and his mandolin wherever he travelled. The back story on the Daniel Pearl Violin, with poignant details, is here.) The 200-seatish room was about half full. Sportiello was super, see above, but to me the star of the evening was Nicki Parrott; girl could sing, girl could play, girl was charming even when she was rude. (For example, she did her own, "I like big instruments," in which one line was, "They say size doesn't matter but I think it's idle chatter.") Her bass playing was strong, melodic, imaginative, very up-front. Jonathan Russell was a bit tentative, and this made me hold my breath. Was he going to make a big dissonant mistake? Answer: no. Next answer, as he found his way into the music --NO!!! -- once into the middle of a piece this boy was just fine. Very clever three-way interaction with Parrott and Sportiello. By the time he's 16, he'll be awesome.

The next night my wife and I found ourselves (long story) at one of Marjorie Eliot's internationally famous Sunday afternoon parlor jazz soirees in upper Harlem. We sat on two of about 75 card-table folding chairs wedged into every crevasse of her apartment. Marjorie not only hosted but also played the piano. Her fingers were long, her knuckles were large, there was a lifetime of music in each chord. She (as did Sportiello) spoke to her audience about the unity of music. To Marjorie, it was also about the unity of humanity and the sharing of joy. "There have been tears, but today we have music," she said. "There's no color thing in here," she explained. There was a newspaper picture of an angry Dr. Martin Luther King, elbow bent, scotch taped to the wall. I won't get the names of the other players right, so let me just describe them. There was a black fellow who sang beautifully, with deep vibrato, in the straight-ahead tradition of Nat King Cole, songs like Autumn Leaves and Autumn in New York. Then he sat down at the piano and a blind white kid came out to play tenor sax, cutting abstract post-bop figures. There was another white tenor player, (Googling, I think the guy is Sedrick Chonkroun), who played in a more lyrical, spare, layered style. Marjorie and the younger gentleman shared piano duties. There were two sets. In the middle, humble refreshments, apple juice and candy bars. At the end, hugging kissing and personal words as we left. Wow.

So. Five gigs to remember in eight days. Life should always be this sweet.

[photo source]

Technorati Tags: Music

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-27344657770416563952009-10-21T06:28:00.005-04:002009-10-21T07:14:58.063-04:00Rachel in Woods HoleI've known since I was a child that Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, did much of her biological work in Woods Hole. A current friend's father was Carson's station chief at what we used to call, "The Fisheries," today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior.

Carson's Silent Spring (1962) is the first book that brought a scientific sensibility about our environment to public attention. The book got action, too. When I see a Great Blue Heron lumbering low across the sky or an Osprey wheel and dive and splash, then struggle into the air with an Alewife in its talons, I silently thank Rachel Carson.

Beth Daley has a terrific article on Carson in today's Boston Globe documenting her various stays in Woods Hole, beginning in 1929. What a pioneer she must have been!

One measure of how much times have changed: She died in 1964. Of breast cancer. This is not reported in the Globe article, but local folklorists recount this fact. Back then you didn't speak of cancer in public. Or breasts. She was suffering silently with her illness even as she was writing Silent Spring.

We actually have made progress against the toxic environmental dangers that Carson identified, but we have a long, long way to go from the first revelations of Silent Spring to the abandonment of the idea that flushing the toxins down the drain means they've gone away. More than the Great Blue and the Osprey are at stake if we don't start treating our small blue planet an integral whole.

h/t: Without Google News Local I might have missed Beth Daley's great piece.

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-91678606441957248202009-10-07T15:09:00.002-04:002009-10-08T18:45:59.759-04:00Meatloaf as contentEthan Z reports a BIF-5 talk by Don Tapscott about learning from your kids, who said he

was invited to spend an hour on national TV, surfing the web. His son refused to watch the show – when they talked about it later, his son said, "That's about as interesting as watching you change channels on the TV." His daughter pitched in, pointing out that the refrigerator is also a technology – "We could watch Dad surfing the fridge – here's some content: it's meatloaf!"

Ethan reports that Tapscott concludes thus:

"If you spend 24 hours a week being a passive participant, consuming tv – as Baby Boomers did – you get a certain sort of brain." If you spend those hours searching, researching and building connections, you get a very different brain.

Technorati Tags: EthanZuckerman, DigitalKids

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-46951087393629379942009-10-07T07:53:00.001-04:002009-10-07T07:53:55.444-04:00Ten riskiest foods regulated by the FDAA is for Afghanistan, B is for Budget, C is for Climate Change . . . down the list somewhere there a government role for food safety. [The free market hasn't done a very good job under laissez faire.]

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) lists [.pdf]
THE TEN RISKIEST FOODS REGULATED BY THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
LEAFY GREENS: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness
EGGS: 352 outbreaks involving 11,163 reported cases of illness
TUNA: 268 outbreaks involving 2341 reported cases of illness
OYSTERS: 132 outbreaks involving 3409 reported cases of illness
POTATOES: 108 outbreaks involving 3659 reported cases of illness
CHEESE: 83 outbreaks involving 2761 reported cases of illness
ICE CREAM: 74 outbreaks involving 2594 reported cases of illness
TOMATOES: 31 outbreaks involving 3292 reported cases of illness
SPROUTS: 31 outbreaks involving 2022 reported cases of illness
BERRIES: 25 outbreaks involving 3397 reported cases of illness

My guess is that there's 100 unreported case for every one that is reported.

Why I care: I'm a consumer of food, I like being healthy, and I can't see the pathogens when I'm buying food in the store.

Link to CSPI.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-35432838175185758402009-10-06T09:44:00.001-04:002009-10-07T07:29:55.984-04:00Mood MessagesUPDATE: Problem solved! Thanks to Phil Wolff and Anonymous. The key is:
Skype Preferences>Advanced>Disable Mood Message Chat

Does anybody know how to block "Mood Messages" in Skype?

If so, please leave a comment or send email. Thanks!

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-46782667610548415412009-10-06T09:34:00.001-04:002009-10-06T09:34:40.191-04:00Nobel Prize honors fiberopticsWoods Hole, my home town, has six scientific institutions and a year-round population of under 1000. As Gloucester is to fish, as Pittsburgh was to steel, as Palo Alto is to venture capital, so is Woods Hole to science.

As I was growing up, the fall spectator sport wasn't the World Series. It was the Nobel Prize. We'd root, root, root for the home team.

This year's Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Charles Kao, who I had the honor of hosting at Bell Labs when I worked there. Ironically, the two other scientists sharing this year's Physics prize, Willard Boyle and George Smith, were Bell Labs scientists, but I did not know them.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences choice to honor fiber this year underscores how civilization-changing a technology it is. The whole spectrum, from DC to daylight, including all the frequencies that carry wireless communications, are replicated in each glass strand. A cable the width of a broomstick can hold thousands of strands. The leap from electronics to photonics will prove to be as profound as the leap from muscle power to mechanical power.

Wireless communications has its place; I'm confident we'll find the right mix of fiber and wireless communications technologies. But our grandchildren are likely to ask us why we didn't replace copper and coax cables faster. What will we tell them?

Technorati Tags: fiberoptics, NobelPrize, WoodsHole

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-88125085565438423492009-10-06T09:04:00.001-04:002009-10-06T12:39:40.739-04:00New Rules? Not here.The new FTC rules about disclosing quid pro quos, business relationships and other possible ulterior motives will not affect this blog.

I've always disclosed facts that might influence my opinion about a topic I''ve blogged about. I'm proud to do so. I feel like I have a duty to my readers to tell them what's behind my opinions -- it's the very essence of blogging, in my opinion.

If there's any question, I'll even disclosed when there's not any influence.

Nobody at the FTC asked me to write this article and the FTC did not pay me anything for it. It's just a good idea. Too bad we bloggers needed a federal agency to tell us how to behave.

UPDATE: Popehat points out that any attempt to enforce these FTC rules is likely to bog down in a regulatory morass. (Hat tip to commenter Jess Austin!) I agree. It'd be SOOOO much better if we just decided that transparent motive disclosure was the thing to do.

Technorati Tags: DontBeEvil, FTC

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-51462560681377735152009-10-02T12:19:00.001-04:002009-10-02T14:22:12.719-04:00Wrong on the "Exaflood," Wrong on Network NeutralityIn 2007, Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, published a paper that hyped a so-called "Exaflood" -- a kooky Discovery Institute idea about how the Internet would drown in its own data.

The Nemertes press release on the paper was widely reported in newspapers. It described itself as a ". . . landmark study . . . groundbreaking analysis . . . evidence the exaflood is coming . . . "

It said,

The findings indicate that by 2010 . . . users could increasingly encounter Internet "brownouts" or interruptions to the applications they've become accustomed to using on the internet.

We are mere weeks from 2010. There's no sign of The Exaflood or brownouts. In fact, the best data indicate that Internet growth appears to be slowing. In two short years, the Nemertes paper's main conclusion is falsified by the data.

Now Johna Till Johnson says, Hello Net Neutrality, Goodbye Internet. She says that Net Neutrality gives carriers

. . . just one option for recouping their costs: Charge by the bit.
Wow. Talk about false choices!

Maybe she's forgotten about "charge by the month," and "charge more for faster connections." How about "charge more for better service."

Maybe the poor carriers aren't making enough to build faster Internet connections. Verizon just made a paltry $6 billion in profits last year and paid $1.3 billion in dividends. AT&T made $12 billion and paid out $2.5 billion to shareholders. These companies need help, Johna. They're really suffering from too much government regulation to build a good Internet.

Johna Till Johnson's "Goodbye Internet" screed misses today's real Net Neutrality action, which is in wireless. The wireless NN action is not about big bandwidth at all. Quite the opposite. Spurred by FCC Chairman Genichowski's recent speech suggesting that wireless NN should be the law of the land, the discussion has shifted to whether wireless companies have the right to block competing low bandwidth apps like texting and telephony over IP. As Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett recently said in the Washington Post,

For wireless, the arbitrage risk comes from low bandwidth applications like Skype and Google Voice, but unfortunately for the voice business, almost all the revenue today comes from low bandwidth voice and data applications. So it's a risk that simply can't be managed by the adoption of usage-based pricing schemes.

So up to now, operators have managed that risk by simply prohibiting certain applications. In net neutral world, they wouldn't have that luxury.

Network Neutrality has never been about the idea of too much bandwidth on a limited network. That's dinosaur feces. It's always been about whether the telcos and cablecos could leverage ties between their network and certain apps to make discriminatory, anti-competitive profits.

The strength of the Internet is that it accepts all traffic without a "will it make money" test. That's why a Pez dispenser collector could grow a hobbyist site into eBay. It's how two Stanford students could grow their thesis into Google. It's how an Israeli apps company that wanted to reduce its phone bill invented Internet telephony. Johna Till Johnson isn't just wrong this time, she has it exactly backwards; the reality is that if we ever say "Goodbye Net Neutrality" we'll also be saying, "Goodbye Internet."

Technorati Tags: AndrewOdlyzko, Internet, JohnaTillJohnson, NetworkNeutrality, WirelessNetworks

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-46064417878849177222009-09-28T11:37:00.002-04:002009-09-28T11:39:13.194-04:00Happy Birthday Norton Buffalo!Norton Buffalo, harmonica player extraordinaire, turns 58 today.

Not all that big a deal, except that he's just been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and it has spread into his brain.

Norton has played with many of the great ones. Steve Miller (for 28 years), Roy Rogers, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, the Doobie Brothers, Elvin Bishop, Merl Saunders, . . . Some of Norton's most touching work is on The Vultures, an all-acoustic string-band-style sendup of sixties hits like Alley Cat, Stranger on the Shore and Moon River.

Here's one guy I'm going to miss when he's gone. Happy Birthday Norton!!!

Technorati Tags: JoeWeed, Music

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-16735783422009989432009-09-25T13:46:00.001-04:002009-09-25T13:46:05.597-04:00Quote of Note: Blair Levin"Broadband is a way that people connect to the Internet."

Blair Levin, Executive Director, Omnibus Broadband Initiative, as interviewed by David Weinberger here.

Why I care.

Technorati Tags: ItsTheInternetStupid, NationalBroadbandPlan, QuoteOfNote

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-56941362165045244282009-09-25T08:56:00.001-04:002009-09-25T08:56:28.956-04:00Flash!!! Global Crossing discovers EthernetI was going to leave a comment on the Global Crossing blog posting entitled The Safe Bet Seems to be Ethernet, but that blog's comments are temporarily disabled.

The post's author, Jeff Smith, Global Crossing's Senior Director Infrastructure Services EMEA (EMEA means Europe, the Middle East and Asia, a medium-sized market just north of The Bronx) writes,

Currently Ethernet is rapidly becoming the primary communications technology of choice for organisations of all sizes in the UK – and it makes complete sense. Most businesses already have Ethernet Local Area Networks (LAN)
It's 2009. I've been saying the same thing since 1998. In 2002 I wrote:

Today networks are losing their mystery -- we've solved the last hundred-foot problem with wired and wireless Ethernet. The next mile won't be so hard either -- technologically speaking. The entire network will become as simple as a LAN. Ethernet will be the any-distance protocol. Customers will connect their own networks to the competitive, networked, global economy.
For a telco, a decade late isn't bad. It beats never.

Technorati Tags: Ethernet, Stupid Network, Telco

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-79851559533904734402009-09-22T08:10:00.001-04:002009-09-22T08:10:42.853-04:00Just saying . . .Net Neutrality will be small potatoes if the U.S. Supreme Court expands corporate personhood.

The carrier could become just-another-biased-intermediary rather than a trusted, neutral infrastructure.

There's a scary NYT editorial on this here.

Technorati Tags: Corporations, NetworkNeutrality, Scotus

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-8274502954373492142009-09-21T12:14:00.001-04:002009-09-21T12:14:41.631-04:00Making Network Neutrality Sustainable, RevisitedToday FCC Chairman Genichowski announced that the FCC's Network Neutrality Proceeding is entering the rule-making stage. This is a historic milestone, worth celebrating, but the milestone is on a road with hairpin turns. If you look directly above us, you can see we're in almost exactly the same place we used to be when the pro-competition provisions of the 1996 Telecom Act were intact and the distinction between telecommunications service and information service was meaningful, but now we are a lot lower.

Today the Internet connection provider sector renews its resistance. As long as there are no major structural changes in this sector, we can expect the resistance to last decades. We can expect it to spread from astroturf think-tanks to courts, to legislatures and state PUCs, and to Congress. We can expect it to enlist law enforcement, Hollywood, mainstream-media news, international bodies and established technology companies. We can expect today's gained ground to erode under our feet. We can expect to keep fighting a long time. Or we can use today's momentum to change the core of the entities driving the fight so it's simply not in their interests to continue it. The choice is ours.

I wrote an essay about this day sixteen months ago. It was early. Below I reproduce my essay in its entirety in the hope that now the timing is better.

CREATING SUSTAINABLE NETWORK NEUTRALITY
by David S. Isenberg, May 29, 2007

Executive Summary: Network Neutrality
as currently conceived requires changes
in carrier behavior that are contrary to
their corporate culture and business model,
so we can expect their active opposition
even after Network Neutrality becomes law.
If carrier resistance prevails, the
Internet stands to lose its key success
factor. The Network Neutrality movement
can learn from history; the demise of
Unbundled Network Elements (UNEs) and the
ensuing collapse of telephone and Internet
competition provides a parallel.
The solution is strategy that is more
ambitious and more patient, that addresses
industry structure rather than carrier
behavior.

Network Neutrality Movement vs. Carriers

I'm proud to be part of the Network Neutrality movement, which
raised the prohibition of, "any service that privileges,
degrades or prioritizes any packet . . . based on its source,
ownership or destination," from an unknown issue in 2005 to a
cause célèbre in 2006. It achieved this victory despite a
press blackout so complete that Project Censored named Network
Neutrality its #1 most under-reported story of 2006! The
Network Neutrality movement is leading a struggle for the
Internet's essence; the Internet would not be the everyday
necessity it is today, or hold promise for tomorrow, if it
were not neutral.

At the same time, I've grown concerned that Network Neutrality
rules and regulations based on constraining carrier behavior
are not sustainable as long as the carriers -- the telephone,
cable and mobile companies -- whose behavior these rules would
constrain, continue to operate according to their legacy
business model. And I've seen signs that some of the Network
Neutrality movement's leaders don't seem to take account of
how the carriers' vertically integrated business model and
special-purpose networks have shaped carrier culture. Just as
understanding the cultures of Iraq might have guided the U.S.
to a different course there, so might understanding the legacy
that motivates telephone, cable and cellular companies help us
make a neutral Internet sustainable.

The task is urgent, because as I write carriers are trialing a
new infrastructure called Internet Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
that will embed discrimination in their entire Internet access
infrastructure. When IMS is deployed, it will effectively
prevent the return to a neutral Internet.

However, before I launch into this exploration of carrier
culture, carrier business models and how we can make the
Internet's neutrality stable and lasting, let me clearly
emphasize two things, lest my message be distorted by Network
Neutrality's opponents:
1. Network Neutrality as currently conceived is a good thing
and an important step forward.
2. The leaders of the Network Neutrality movement are heroes
who have devoted their careers to the creation of good
technology policy and who made miracles in 2006.

How Carriers Understand the Internet Threat

In the waning hours of 2006, during the FCC'S negotiations on
AT&T's merger with BellSouth, Network Neutrality advocates
fought hard and won several very important concessions.
However, in post-negotiation discussions, they adopted a
"talking point" to the effect that Network Neutrality would
not hurt the giant merged telephone company's business
interests. One of the movement's negotiators said, "The
conditions placed on this merger will show irrefutably that
Network Neutrality and phone company profits are not mutually
exclusive." Another said, "The fact that AT&T reported nearly
$2 billion in profits, up 17% from a year ago, double-digit
growth in earnings per share, growth in residential lines
should put to rest any concerns that Network Neutrality
requirements will harm AT&T's growth now or in the future."
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=press15
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/804

At best, the talking point is inaccurate, because we have not
yet seen systematic Internet Discrimination or its effects on
carrier profits, but I think it points to deeper
misunderstanding. Carriers don't spend $1.5 million a week as
they did in 2006 lobbying against Network Neutrality unless
they believe they will be harmed by it! I think the carriers'
belief is correct; Network Neutrality rules strong enough to
keep the Internet neutral will indeed weaken their business.
(I don't think that's a bad thing provided we can figure out
other ways to provide Internet access.) I've been saying for
a decade that the Internet is incompatible with telephone
companies in their current form http://isen.com/stupid.html.
Then I warned (with David Weinberger) that there's an
untenable paradox when carriers that are built on a legacy of
special-purpose networks sell plain, neutral Internet
connectivity http://netparadox.com . In 2002, many of my
colleagues and I wrote to the FCC urging that it should avoid
propping up incumbent carriers and let them fail fast so new,
more Internet compatible operating models might emerge
http://www.netparadox.com/fccletter.html. The conclusion of
this work for carriers is that the neutral, stupid, end-to-end
Internet is such disruptive technology that they must denature
it or face the risk that it could weaken them and ultimately
put them out of business.

A decade ago the big telephone companies were complacent about
the Internet. Now they see Internet applications beginning to
have revenue impact on their core businesses. Skype, for
example, is an Internet telephony application that is capable
of better voice quality than telephony, with useful features
impossible for a conventional telephone company to deploy. It
isn't tied to the telephone company's network and it can run
on any Internet connection. In a similar manner, video
applications such as Vuze provide disruptive Internet
alternatives to conventional cable-based video services, and
wi-fi appliances using Voice over Internet Protocol promise to
disrupt the mobile telephony sector.

In the early 2000s carriers began to understand the threat.
Carrier executives started speaking publicly about it several
years before Ed Whitacre's famous complaint about how popular
Internet applications are using "his pipes" for free. In
2003, for example, AT&T CEO Dave Dorman complained, "Email is
a feature that nobody pays for," and called for the
restoration of "network resident" applications.
http://isen.com/archives/030818.html Coincidentally, 2003
marked the first of three carrier milestones that rolled back
their obligations to provide a neutral Internet. These were
the FCC triennial order of 2003 (which lightened key public
obligations on the installers of local access fiber), the
Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 (which lightened many
public obligations of cable owners) and the subsequent FCC DSL
order (which lightened the public obligations of DSL
providers).

Viewed against these milestones, Network Neutrality is a come-
from-behind tactical reaction that only arose after the legacy
of common carrier obligations had been hollowed out, after
critical distinctions between infrastructure and information,
carriage and content, and basic and enhanced services had been
defined into fragmentary meaninglessness, and after the
competition envisioned as better than government regulation by
the Telecom Act of 1996 had devolved to a grunch of giants.

Accordingly, we need more than legal policy if a neutral
Internet is to endure. We must address the non-neutrality of
the carriers' technological infrastructure, core business
model and, indeed, their self-concept.

The Carrier Business Model

Carriers are slow to act, but once they do, they're
relentless. Their next step, the introduction of Internet
Discrimination, is likely to take a decade, maybe two. It is
an economic imperative to them. Discrimination is built into
the special-purpose networks that are the foundation of their
business model.

For 130 years, if you wanted telephony on a telephone network,
you used the telephone company's telephony application. There
were no alternatives. Application discrimination was
automatic. Now, in contrast, on a neutral Internet connection
you can run Skype or Vonage or Gizmo or CallVantage or dozens
of other Internet telephony applications. But on Verizon's
conventional telephone network you can only run Verizon
telephony. These facts may seem obvious, but they're
important because tying the application to the underlying
network is the cornerstone of the carrier business model.

In other words, until the Internet arrived, carriers have
always sold the application and used application revenues to
operate the underlying special-purpose network. So, for
example, a cable company's core business is selling video
entertainment it chooses rather than connectivity, via its
cable, to anything, including other video entertainment! The
Internet breaks the special-purpose network based carrier
business model.

Carrier executives are now scared. In private, when I talk
about Network Neutrality with them, they talk about capital
expenditure, incomplete amortization, the loss of traditional
customers and the growing strength of application-based
competitors.

It is extremely difficult for established companies to adopt a
new business model. It is not clear how companies build
successful new business models in the first place, but Eric
Beinhocker in The Origins of Wealth suggests that successful
models may come more from trial and error than from insight
and intent. Clayton Christiansen's Innovator's Dilemma
describes how businesses actively suppress innovation; at
budget time when there's a decision between improving an
established product or developing a young, risky, marginally
profitable one, it's a no-brainer. In addition, Robert
Jackall, in his study corporate culture published as Moral
Mazes, observes that under Management by Objective, bottom-up
innovation causes pain for one's boss, which, in turn, reduces
one's promotability with predictable effects on innovation.
In all cases, the larger the change, the more likely that
change will be suppressed. A new business model based on a
nondiscriminatory Internet would be difficult and risky at
best.

Carriers see themselves as providers of telephony, video
entertainment and mobile telephony. These applications have
shaped their corporate culture, their way of doing business
and their physical infrastructure. Carriers see Internet
access as a new, supplemental business. They see their road to
profitability paved by Internet Discrimination, because
Internet Discrimination casts the Internet in terms that are
congruent with their historical, established business model.
So the carriers are intent on rolling back the legal
prohibitions against Internet Discrimination.

In addition, they're developing and testing a new network
architecture that tracks packets across the network and
enables differential packet-by- packet treatment and charging.
It is called Internet Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS. IMS is to
be the technological realization of the carriers' plan to cast
the Internet in terms consistent with their legacy business
model. Indeed, IMS will only have value to them if Internet
Discrimination is legal.

The Lesson of Unbundled Network Elements

Network Neutrality advocates should learn from history about
how the carriers work. Take, for example, their persistent
campaign to neutralize the idea of Unbundled Network Elements
(UNEs). UNEs were created under the Telecom Act of 1996 to
enable new competition. Specifically, the problem UNEs were
created to solve was that a new Competitive Local Exchange
Company (CLEC) or facilities-based Internet Service Provider
(ISP) that wanted its own network would need a massive chunk
of capital, then a period of network construction, before
seeing revenue dollar #1. So UNE rules were introduced
whereby incumbent telcos (ILECs) would make elements of their
network (elements such as local loop, switching, etc.)
available to new CLECs at prices that would allow these new
companies to offer services and earn revenues from them.

The theory was that new CLECs would build their own physical
network facilities gradually as business revenues grew. The
ILECs owed their success to their privileged role as a
monopoly with guaranteed profits because they provided a
public good, rather than to technological superiority or
competitive prowess. So the framers of the 1996 Act saw UNEs
as a reasonable way to re-distribute that public good to
introduce competition.

The ILECs saw UNEs differently. UNEs were against their
interests. UNEs enabled their competitors. Thus the ILECs
framed UNE's as an unfair taking of their private property.
And they behaved accordingly.

The ILEC influence on initial UNE rules was so heavy that even
AT&T, then a long-distance-only company, was not able to
launch a viable UNE- based local telephony business. The
conditions under which the ILECs were to offer UNEs (known in
the trade as "necessary and impair") were sufficiently
ambiguous as to be subject to endless litigation. An ILEC
could simply out- lawyer, out-appeal and out-wait new
entrants. Hundreds of small CLECs (here CLEC includes
facilities-based Internet Service Providers, or ISPs) sprang
up between 1996 and 2000 planning to use UNEs to offer network
services and grow. Virtually all of them went out of business
over the following few years as the entire UNE concept was
worn away by a constant trickle of seemingly minor technical
FCC and court decisions.

The ILECs survived even as they continued to complain that
they were selling "their" network elements, "below cost."
They had other fiscal troubles due to (a) the rapid adoption
of dial-up Internet access, (b) the equally rapid abandonment
of dial-up Internet access as customers switched to cable and
then DSL too, (c) a parallel adoption and abandonment of fax
machines, and (d) the rapid shift to mobile phones. The ILECs
were left battered but standing. The CLECs were wiped out.
In the end, some two trillion dollars in market capitalization
was destroyed.

UNEs were not the only cause of the CLECs' demise, to be
sure. Overspending, irrational exuberance, bad growth
projections, ILEC-friendly regulators, incompetent management
and even criminal behavior played a role. But the demise of
UNEs was a major and under-recognized strategic means of
influence.

In 2003, the FCC essentially eliminated UNE rules for
broadband networks. The competition envisioned by the Telecom
Act of 1996 was dead.

When Network Neutrality Dies

There is a clear parallel between UNEs and Network
Neutrality. Like Network Neutrality, UNEs were envisioned as
a fair, public-spirited means of ensuring competition. Both
ideas are actively opposed by the telcos because they are
contrary to their business interests. In other words, just as
the telcos saw UNEs as using "their" infrastructure to enable
their competitors, so do telcos and cablecos see Network
Neutrality as enabling application providers to offer "their"
applications. Like UNEs, Network Neutrality is, at inception,
already a weak compromise, and like UNEs, we can be sure that
the telcos will exploit every ambiguity, litigate every "and,"
"but" and comma, in every Network Neutrality rule and
regulation, and will not rest until Network Neutrality has
been rendered totally ineffective.

Then, just as the demise of UNEs spurred the collapse of the
entire CLEC sector, so would the collapse of Network
Neutrality gut the now- vibrant Internet applications sector.
If Network Neutrality collapses -- and history teaches us that
policy alone is not a strong enough bulwark against carriers
defending their legacy -- our carrier will stand between us
and our Internet searches, us and our private correspondence,
us and our medical information, us and our travel plans, us
and our financial transactions. When Network Neutrality goes,
eBay, Amazon, Yahoo and Google will need to fight for their
lives, and a thousand lesser- known apps and services, will be
captured, neutered, destroyed or forced into some inaccessible
corner. The walls enclosing quasi-public services like
MySpace and FaceBook will grow higher. My blog and yours will
be shoved into a "free speech zone" in some barbed-wire corner
of the Internet.

The above scenario may not play out exactly like this, but the
vector of carrier opposition to Network Neutrality is
obvious. We can expect the carriers' push against Network
Neutrality -- even after rules and regulations go into effect!
-- will be relentless.

Making Network Neutrality Sustainable

If it is to succeed, the pro-Network Neutrality campaign must
be as persistent and forward- looking as the carriers'.

I am skeptical about the long-term viability of simply
prohibiting Internet Discrimination. The occurrence of
discrimination might be hard to establish, and carriers might
see penalties as just a cost of doing business. More likely,
exigencies will arise -- terrorism, copyright violations, et
cetera -- that are manipulated to make broad-daylight Internet
Discrimination seem acceptable and moot even the strongest ex
ante rules and deterring penalties. So whether or not we
succeed in making Internet Discrimination illegal, we should
also take initiatives like the following:

1) We should put the concept of structural separation back on
the table! If 1.6 million save-the-Internet petitioners can
understand Network Neutrality enough to realize it applies to
them, they can understand the idea that NETWORK OPERATORS MUST
NOT HAVE A FINANCIAL INTEREST IN THE APPLICATIONS THAT THEY
CARRY. This is a bright line. It will be obvious if carriers
cross it or obfuscate it. But instituting it will be a long-
term, come-from-behind strategic effort. It should begin now.

2) We should expand the coalition of Internet customers to
*all* users of the Internet. As Internet customers, Boeing
and GE and Monsanto, and the AFL-CIO and AARP and United
Health Care, share more interests with citizen Internet users
and Internet companies than they do with carriers. This too
must be a long-term persistent effort.

3) We should clearly frame the current telco industry
structure as monopolistic. After the mergers of MCI, AT&T and
BellSouth, US telecom competition is all but dead. The only
thing worse than a monopoly is an unregulated monopoly. Even
worse is a monopoly that sees its business threatened by
freedom, innovation, competition and technological progress
afforded by an open, neutral Internet.

4) The Network Neutrality movement should frame its advocacy
in Congress, at the FCC and in the States in terms of a
national telecommunications policy to unify what now might
seem to be independent projects, including advocacy of faster
access at lower prices, community and municipal Internet
access networks, progressive CALEA, 911 and universal service
policies that are not weighted against new competitors,
explicit and clear terms of service, regulations that permit
using any device on mobile telephone networks, and the
harmonization of U.S. spectrum policy with technological
advances.

Dilemma: The Internet Connectivity Providers Are the Anti-
Neuts

The largest providers of today's Internet infrastructure are
also the strongest opponents of Network Neutrality. If their
profit stream diminishes, which it must if the Internet is to
remain neutral, stupid and open, then we weaken the
infrastructure for that which we value. This is not a new
thought, see The Paradox of the Best Network
http://netparadox.com. What is new is that the opposition of
the telcos and cablecos has now crystallized in a full-on
assault on the Internet's neutrality. Their end game is a
corporatized Internet that stifles freedom, democracy and
innovation incidental to reifying the telco-cableco business
model. Ultimately, the vision of the Network Neutrality
movement must encompass more than the circumscription of
certain carrier behaviors; it must be structural.

We must resolve to persist until today's dinosaurs evolve into
birds. That is, we must face the fact that if the Internet is
to survive as a neutral network, sooner or later we will need
Internet access without carriers as we know them today. So we
need to decide whether we keep the neutral Internet or we keep
today's carriers, because we won't be able to have both.

Technorati Tags: NetworkNeutrality

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-38347597387560296882009-09-20T13:49:00.001-04:002009-09-20T13:49:57.796-04:00OneWebDay, an excellent Op-EdThe Op-Ed quoted below, in yesterday's Burlington (NC) Times-News, by Janna Quitney Anderson, hits the very core of the spirit of OneWebDay.

This is a hot time for the World Wide Web in North Carolina, and this week as we celebrate OneWebDay (an Earth Day for the Web each Sept. 22) it is a great time to look at where we are and where we are going.

[snip]

Just like its inspiration Earth Day, OneWebDay is aimed at enlisting everyone in the protection of a key human network — the communications network — a vital social, political and economic ecosystem on planet Earth.

The annual OneWebDay is a time to express our thanks and support for the builders of and contributors to the amazing, ever-changing Web while also encouraging them and all of our leaders to be cognizant of rapid change, be vigilant about coming challenges and to ensure that the Web continues to evolve to serve the greater good.

This fall we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first Internet connection. The initial computer-to-computer chat was a brief information exchange between two nodes — one at UCLA and the other at Stanford Research Institute — on Sept. 2, 1969. It is difficult now to remember the days when computers were not networked.

[snip]

OneWebDay also serves as an annual wake-up call that helps us to focus our attention on key issues tied to the Web. We want to assure that anyone who desires it has open and fair access to sharing of information on the Web and the Internet.

It is difficult to overstate how much we have come to depend on the hyperconnected human network known as the WorldWideWeb. Most folks in developed nations count on it directly or indirectly every day, and growing numbers of people in our region of the world make their living working as the engineers, researchers, teachers, inventors, administrators and creative people who are helping it evolve.

We are blessed to have amazing new capabilities thanks to our communications networks. With these blessings come responsibilities. The Web presents new opportunities for upholding and advancing human rights, for example through enhancing access to knowledge and resources. It is vital that we build on and extend these opportunities while keeping the network of networks secure and open.
h/t to Nathaniel James, Executive Director of OneWebDay.
I'm proud to be a Member of the Board of OneWebDay!

Technorati Tags: Internet, OWD, OWD09, OneWebDay

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-43230969670087206952009-09-18T08:48:00.001-04:002009-09-18T08:48:42.486-04:00Are Colleges Obsolete?Zephyr Teachout, of Dean Campaign fame, has an Op-Ed in last Sunday's Washington Post that builds an intriguing disruption scenario from several trends in college education. Her central claim is that

Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.
She cites the redundancy of traditional teaching, the advent of low-cost on-line classes, take-it-yourself tests, the rise of for-profit degrees, the fact that half of all graduating seniors have attended more than one college, etc. She sticks close to the, "Colleges, like newspapers," story.

Basically it is a good story except for one key issue: Learning is not like reading a newspaper. When you read a newspaper, you're information gathering. When you attend college, (in all but the most recalcitrant cases) you're learning.

I'm not talking about college learning like how much beer we can drink or how sexual partnership works . . . well, maybe I am talking about that too . . . mostly I'm talking about the learning of academic subjects, and, ultimately, a profession.

Learning in isolation is fundamentally different from solo information gathering activities. You learn more standing around a water cooler with your colleagues than you do poring over a manual by yourself. The quiet parental faith of a teacher can be critical. Boisterous play with co-learners can give new handles to gathered information. Sometimes we don't even realize we're learning, 'cause it's so much fun.

A couple of decades ago, I set out to learn some oceanography. I read three really good books. My mind was . . . pardon . . . swimming in facts. Then, in an informal conversation with a real oceanographer, I suddenly realized that I'd failed to understand a keystone of physical oceanography, that there's more dissolved gas in colder water. Duh. My embarrassment inspired me to learn what I'd missed much more than a C on some quiz ever could. The oceanographer sensed my confusion and shifted into help mode. The conversation showed me what was important, how the facts I knew fit -- and didn't fit -- together, and gave a very fast remedial lesson.

I'm not saying that Professor Teachout is wrong. If the Internet survives in its current form, there's no doubt that the Academy will be as shaken as other institutions that thrive on information. And, if the Internet remains open to innovation, there's no doubt that its multi-modal, social, interactive uses that underlie real learning will become even more important.

Nevertheless, today human interaction is still more powerful when it's face-to-face, in meat-space, than it is on the Internet. We prove that almost every time we travel. It's not likely anytime soon that the sales person on-line will make the sale as effectively as the sales person in your office. Th Internet still has a ways to go. As long as informal interaction is a key to learning, it'll be key to college. The anticipated disruption may take a lot longer for colleges than for newspapers.

Technorati Tags: Press, Learning, University, ZephyrTeachout

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-23893257241317635942009-09-17T22:33:00.001-04:002009-09-17T22:33:42.411-04:00We're #37 -- in Health Care<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVgOl3cETb4&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVgOl3cETb4&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
[source]

Technorati Tags: Politics, Health, USLosingLead

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-46813465605874305062009-09-17T11:24:00.001-04:002009-09-17T11:27:14.596-04:00Verizon throws 18 states under the progress trainI am a happy Verizon FIOS fiber-to-the-home customer in Connecticut, I admire the long view Verizon took to build its FIOS infrastructure, and I appreciate the substantial punishment that Verizon took from Wall Street until it became obvious that FIOS would be a huge success.

But Verizon is not building FIOS in all of its territories!

Verizon is unloading land lines in eighteen states because they don't want to keep building FIOS there. It would be a huge commitment of Verizon's money and time to give these states FIOS. In fact -- and this, I believe, is THE key issue -- the financial benefits of deploying FIOS in these states probably would not accrue until after the current crop of senior Verizon executives retire. Almost certainly, Verizon bean counters have calculated that their books -- and, most importantly, senior management bonuses -- would look better in the short term if they spun out states that are harder to fiber up.

In other words, Verizon is sacrificing the long-term interests of their customers, the best interests of eighteen of our United States, and the long-term interests of their shareholders on the altar of the quick buck.

The first Verizon spin-outs are already deep in doo-doo trouble. Hawaii Tel is bankrupt. FairPoint Communications, which acquired Verizon land lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont was just hauled before an unprecedented joint meeting of the ME, NH and VT PUCs for non-performance only seven months after their Verizon deal closed. The FairPoint CEO is talking Chapter 11 only seven months after the deal closed. (Note: Seven months is a picosecond in telco planning time. In other words, anybody who had looked when the deal closed would have known exactly what the situation would be in seven months. I wonder who told what to who . . . and in return for what?)

A recent article on the Maine-New Hampshire-Vermont joint PUC hearing on FairPoint's problems cited

. . . widespread e-mail problems in February and March, and continuing regionwide service problems such as bills issued after service was canceled and months-long waits to get new phone lines . . .

FairPoint's operational problems even affected customers trying to complain to Vermont regulators. According to John Burke of the Vermont Public Service Board,

"For the first three business hours of the day today, if anybody tried to call the Public Service Board, they got the following message: 'You have dialed a nonworking number, please check this number and try it again.' "

Here's another article on the ME_NH_VT joint PUC hearing.

There's an $8.6 B deal in the works to spin Verizon landline assets to Frontier in some 14 states; Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin, plus some California assets. But this deal is stalled in Ohio because regulators see what's happened in Hawaii, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.

This situation has only been reported regionally.

The State Journal (WV), in a recent, quite comprehensive article, explains the big picture like this:

. . . the payoff for Verizon is it cannot only make money selling off its assets, but it can take advantage of a federal tax loophole that allows tax-free mergers between companies. The smaller companies are left saddled with debt and, as a result, can't make the necessary upgrades to existing infrastructure, turning off customers and ultimately leading to work force reductions as dissatisfied customers turn somewhere else.
The State Journal quotes Keith Fulton, president of Verizon West Virginia saying that the land line business . . .

. . . is a declining business for many.
Another 'paper, the Dayton (OH) Daily News, reports Phone merger of Frontier, Verizon should be rejected, counsel says. The article says that the Ohio Consumers' Council cites

. . . the lack of consumer benefits and potential pitfalls . . .
of the merger, and says

The lack of specific benefits for consumers fails to make this merger in the public interest.
A current Google News search returns regional stories but ZERO significant national coverage of Verizon's "throw rural America under the train" strategy.

This video is another good piece. [I could not get an embedded version working.]

Technorati Tags: FIOS, landline, NationalBroadbandPlan, Press, Verizon

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-48817288111404878762009-09-15T09:22:00.001-04:002009-09-15T09:22:58.301-04:00Texting & Driving, Killer App!Are cellcos complicit in our nation's 42,000 traffic deaths and 2,500,000 injuries every year? Let's talk about the Last Mile . . .

This morning's "News" story on the local Disney-GE-Time-Warner-Fox-TV channel said there was New Evidence on Cell Phones and Cancer. Yeah, right. The cancer scare is a distraction, another cover-up for the real problem, talking -- and, even more dangerously, texting -- while driving.

This old, resuscitated TV story might have clued me to predict the contents of today's New York Times, to wit, the editorial entitled Texting to Death citing . . .

. . . growing evidence that texting creates a greater risk of crashing than even drunken driving.
In 2002 I wrote,

. . . along with more short text messages I'm expecting more car crashes. Message retrieval; a REAL killer app.
In 2004 I wrote,

drv n txt = crsh!
Today's New York Times editorial calls for stricter laws and steeper penalties. Ineffective. Unimaginative. Boring. Do they write these editorials in their sleep?

Glenn Fleischman, in his Wi-Fi Networking News in 2004, had a deeper thought. He reasoned that as long as cellcos are selling minutes, they're not motivated to join any campaign to stop use of their services while driving. He wrote:

When cell operators finally switch to unlimited monthly plans, they'll want people to talk less . . . you can bet we'll see a 100-percent full-court press on restricting talking at all while driving.
Cellcos are even more motivated to allow their customers to text -- didja see how much they're raking in? Texting is the cellcos' newest money machine!

Unlimited monthly packages -- there's an idea. Of course the cellcos will resist because they won't be able to get away with selling many of the little 100%-profit extras they now sell.

There are three other approaches -- in addition to safer pricing plans -- we (as a nation) could explore:

1) Speech-to-text is fairly good these days. It's an open research question whether texters could dictate text messages with less distraction than they type them. Research, I repeat, research. Since lives are on the line, such research should be generously and rapidly funded. Any remediation would depend on the data . . . but let's get going. (Same for studying retrieving messages using text-to-speech.)

2) Today's cell phones have location mechanisms built in. The first derivative of location is speed. If a cell phone were traveling over ten miles per hour, the cellco could brick it! Of course, this approach has problems. First, it would tar passengers with the same brush as drivers. Passengers in private automobiles are rare enough, but it would also punish train and bus passengers. (Also, location information should have strong privacy protections.) Aggressive, active study, please.

3) The overriding problem is the automobile itself. In 2007 there were some 42,000 US traffic deaths and some 2,500,000 injuries. We don't even need to count hours wasted in eight lane parking lots. Or pollution. Or the petro-distortion of foreign policy. We should begin a major, long-term, systematic, persistent national push to get people out of cars and onto public transportation. No research needed; this would absolutely reduce the numbers of dead and injured due to travel.

There's no surprises here. We've seen this coming for a decade. Why are we still sleepwalking in search of solutions?

Technorati Tags: Cellco, CognitivePsychology, GlennFleishman, Travel

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-77801402254351996542009-09-14T20:11:00.001-04:002009-09-17T12:20:02.030-04:00Ai Wei Wei, censorship, earthquake, protest, police brutality, surgery, the press, trust, not necessarily in that orderWas Ai Wei Wei, the awestriking artist from mainland China I met at the DLD conference in 2007, beaten by Chinese police for protesting the deaths of thousands of school children in Chengdu when shodily-built schools collapsed in an earthquake on May 12, 2008? Is Ai Wei Wei undergoing surgery in Germany for brain damage? Is the alleged brain damage a result of the alleged beating? How do you find evidence you trust?

Ethan Zuckerman plays it right down the middle, aiming at each nuance of the might-be story as if it were a reflector bump separating the lanes of a dark highway on a foggy night. We know that Ai Wei Wei's blog is gone, with this picture in its place, which is, in turn,

a reference to a dirty joke about Chinese censorship so complicated that [Ethan has] to lead you to a whole other blogpost to explain it.

Ethan concludes

I still don't know whether Ai Weiwei is having surgery today, or whether the surgery is connected to his police treatment. I pray that he's okay.
Even before the current set of (possible) incidents, Ai Wei Wei appeared to me as a mythical presence more than as a human being. The art, the architecture, the vision, the feats of installation, flowed out of him. Of course I hope he's OK. But, in some other sense, he's Paul Bunyan. Of course he has a pet blue ox. Of course he cut down the biggest tree in the forest. Of course he avenged the deaths of five thousand school children. Of course it took a hundred Chinese cops to subdue him. Of course an ancient, secret society spirited him to Germany for surgery. Of course the best brain surgeons in the world restored his extrasensory powers. Of course he'll live.

UPDATE: Apparently Ai Wei Wei was beaten, did suffer brain trauma, did have the surgery in Germany and is recovering nicely. [source]

Technorati Tags: art, China, DLD, EthanZuckerman, myth, RebeccaMacKinnon

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-48713354510583397182009-09-12T17:09:00.000-04:002009-09-12T17:10:03.339-04:00BTOP Reviewer Isn't a Reviewer YetThere's a new blog in town, BTOP Reviewer, by Mike O'Connor that documents his experience as he applies to be a reviewer for the NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunity Program. As a reviewer, he would read and judge about seven of the 2200 applications to spend the $4.2 billion in stimulus money that Congress has aimed at broadband.

So far, Mike has applied to be a reviewer -- an unpaid position -- and he's waiting. The process is on a very short fuse. The program is designed to distribute the money rapidly, to pump money into the economy and stimulate constructive, job creating projects.

Despite the short fuse, he's waiting.

And he's waiting.

And he's getting discouraged.

And now, despite his very obvious eagerness to help, it looks like he's not going to be chosen to be among the first reviewers.

Technorati Tags: Broadband

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-18053860091562101562009-09-11T16:46:00.001-04:002009-09-11T17:24:02.607-04:00FairPoint to renege on dealThe Concord (NH) Monitor reports:

FairPoint Communications told regulators yesterday that it will not meet its commitment to expand broadband internet access to 75 percent of its access lines by the beginning of October . . . FairPoint Communications bought Verizon's landline network in the three states in April 2008. In a settlement that allowed the sale to move forward in New Hampshire, FairPoint agreed to expand its broadband reach from 62 percent of access lines to 75 percent within 18 months of the sale, 85 percent within two years and 95 percent within five years. That commitment to invest in the infrastructure was a major selling point. The company could be fined $500,000 for every percentage point it falls short, according to the settlement agreement.

Seven months is a blink of an eye in telco planning time (which is the opposite of Internet time). In other words, they had to have known seven months ago where they'd be now.

[FairPoint] Executives faced some stern words from regulators.
Oh, my goodness, stern words.

[FairPoint] CEO David Hauser said he would not "set an arbitrary deadline of when something's going to be fixed without knowing the amount of work to go into it." He also declined to set service benchmarks, saying too many metrics create confusion.

. . . strange, now that Fairpoint has violated the original "arbitrary deadline" when it promised a specific "amount of work to go into it."

I wonder what Verizon thought it was selling in April 2008. I wonder what FairPoint thought it was buying. I wonder if anybody in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont, said, "Oh goody goody, we'll love our phone company now."

The article continues:

Eyebrows raised among union representatives when, asked about company morale, Hauser said employees are "very excited about this business" and its potential.
The article continues:

[Fairpoint CEO Hauser] was open in talking about the possibility of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He said it would be in no one's interest to liquidate the company because FairPoint has a steady stream of revenue with which to repay its lenders over time.
Note: There is cellular telephony in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, but FairPoint doesn't have any cellular offering. "Steady stream of revenue," my anatomy.

The article continues:

FairPoint admitted to falling short on at least three other criteria laid out in the settlement agreement. It has not added a resident of northern New England to be a member of the board, set up a trust to pay for the medical benefits and life insurance of its New Hampshire retirees, or fully staffed a call center in Littleton.
The article concludes by quoting Hauser:

"Northern New England is what makes or breaks FairPoint, now or tomorrow or next week or as far as I can see," he said.

No further comment needed.

Technorati Tags: Telco, Verizon

isenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-24505827432615436352009-09-10T23:57:00.001-04:002009-09-10T23:57:18.880-04:00Highly unusual meeting . . .Forbes reports

[Yesterday there was] a highly unusual joint meeting of the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, the Maine Public Utilities Commission and the Vermont Public Service Board. The goal was to give regulators an update on FairPoint's efforts to stabilize its troubled operation systems, as well as organizational changes and financial matters.

FairPoint, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., owns and operates phone companies in 18 states, but its largest holdings by far are in northern New England, where it bought Verizon Communications ( VZ - news - people )' landline telephone and Internet business last year. The company officially took over the system seven months ago and has been beset with problems ever since.
Seven months ago. Problems ever since. You think Verizon had any idea what it was selling? Did the PUCs of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have any idea what their states were getting? Nah, this was probably a big surprise to everybody.

Technorati Tags: Telco, Verizon

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-91406221938286222242009-08-27T08:29:00.001-04:002009-08-27T08:29:14.828-04:00Benoit Felten in Washington DCOne of the more thoughtful infrastructure analysts in the business, Benoit Felten, has a free evening in Washington DC on September 8. If you're trying to understand the Eurofiber scene, Benoit's your guy. His invitation is here.

Technorati Tags: BenoitFelten, fiberoptics

isenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5705388.post-52787118934366819782009-08-21T17:16:00.001-04:002009-08-21T17:16:15.310-04:00NYC Misses Clue TrainQ: Why did the New York MTA miss the ClueTrain?
A: Because it couldn't find a train schedule anywhere!

The New York Times reports that the MTA considers any use of its public train schedules that it doesn't explicitly license to be a violation of copyright. It says:

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sent a take down notice to Greenwich man Chris Schoenfeld for using Metropolitan Transportation Authority schedules to power his StationStops iPhone application. The popular blogger created an $2.99 application that gives commuters access to MTA train and bus schedules. He received a DMCA last Friday to remove the application from the app store The MTA claims that its scheduling information is copyrighted intellectual property. You read that right. Public train schedules are being treated as copyrighted material.
The specifics of the story revolve around MetroNorth train schedules. I'm a frequent rider. The official Web site is as useless as spurs in a Mercedes, and just about that inconvenient. It is another battle in the war on customers . . .

Not only that, it goes against everything that Mayor Bloomberg said about e-Government in his talk at Personal Democracy Forum in June! I hope somebody at MetroNorth gets the word.

Technorati Tags: CluetrainManifesto, PDF2009, e-government, Stupidity, Travel

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Interest Level
Grades 3 - 5
Reading Level
Grade level Equivalent: 2.3
Lexile® Measure: 500L
Guided Reading: O
- Comedy and Humor
- Fantasy
- Challenges and Overcoming Obstacles
- Courage, Bravery, Heroism
- New School
About This Book
When a traveling minstrel foretells that he is to become a hero, Wiglaf sets out to fulfill his destiny: He signs up at the Dragon Slayers' Academy. But how can he ever hope to be a dragon slayer when he can't even stand the sight of blood?
Items Added to Cart:
1 Paperback
2 Hardcover
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B CELLARS Vineyards and Winery
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© Copyright 2015 B Cellars. b is a registered trademark of 26 Brix llc. Photography copyright 2010 by S.K. Lumpkin / www.underprairieskies.com


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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said the plant is safe but estimates that by 2017, the metal in the aging reactor vessel could reach the regulatory limit for handling "pressurized thermal shock."
That phenomenon can occur in a rare accident scenario in which large amounts of cold water has to be injected into the reactor. The rapid cooling could challenge the vessel's integrity.
As previously reported, the NRC will be holding a webinar on March 19 to discuss the potential issue of pressurized thermal shock at Palisades.
As nuclear reactor vessels age, the metal becomes more
Palisades is one of the U.S. plants closest to its embrittlement limit, NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng told Reuters.
To keep Palisades open past 2017, Entergy would have to provide evidence the reactor vessel would remain safe beyond that time limit, Mitlyng said.
Palisades, which entered service in 1971, is located on the shore of Lake Michigan. In 2007, the NRC renewed the reactor's original 40-year operating license for an additional 20 years until 2031.Read more about Palisades nuclear power plant from MLive and the Kalamazoo Gazette.


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by Mahmoud al Massad
Abu Ammar, one of thousands of ex-Mujahideen in Jordan, now struggles to support his family on his meager earnings from recycling discarded cardboard. After years of fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Ammar struggles with his faith and the social realities of life in the hometown of the infamous al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Independent Lens, Global Perspectives Collection, Global Voices
Relocated Mountains
by Matthew Metcalfe and Julia Parnell
A Kurdish refugee risks his life by traveling back to his homeland to visit his grandmother before she dies.
Global Perspectives Collection
Where Soldiers Come From
by Heather Courtney
Feeling trapped in their rural hometown, five friends join the National Guard and begin their four-year journey from teenagers to soldiers in Afghanistan to veterans.
Women, War & Peace
by Abigail Disney, Gini Reticker, and Pamela Hogan
Women, War & Peace, a five-part PBS mini-series, is a global media initiative on the roles of women in peace and conflict.
Women and Girls Lead
Viewing Topic: Peace & ConflictView All
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Dorothy O'Connor: Martin Shallenberger Artist in Residence in 2013
April 6 - June 30 2013
Atlanta-based artist, Dorothy O'Connor, will be creating a new installment of her acclaimed series Scenes at Cheekwood this spring in her role as the 2013 Martin Shallenberger Artist-in-Residence program. Open studio hours will be held on Tuesdays (10 am – 12 pm) and Thursdays (10 am – 12 pm) now through April 4th so that visitors can observe her at work. Once completed, the new exhibition Shelter to debut to the public on April 6 and be on display until June 30.
During her residency at Cheekwood and throughout the subsequent exhibition, O'Connor will create a multilayered installation covering multiple gallery spaces. Visitors will find Cheekwood's Frist Learning Center galleries transformed into an enchanted forest constructed from the pages of books, complete with handmade animals, forest details and other props. O'Connor's vision for the site was inspired by Cheekwood's beautiful natural landscape, particularly the trees in and around its gardens. Trees appear frequently in the artist's work, representing significant concepts such as aging, history, life and death. The piece will incorporate the root system of a forest, with the central part of the scene installed in the Frist Learning Center's Courtyard Gallery and additional video documentation in the exhibition stables.
Now in its second year, the Martin Shallenberger Artist-in-Residence program brings national and international artists to Nashville to create one-of-a-kind pieces at Cheekwood, interacting with staff, visitors, and the arts community throughout the creative process. With its renowned gardens and art collections, Cheekwood offers visiting artists a great set of resources to reflect broadly on nature and sustainability within a global art world. Thanks to the private foundation that provides the endowment for the program, new developments for 2013 include renovations within the Frist Learning Center that will allow O'Connor and future resident artists to conduct the majority of their work in the gallery on site.
"We are thrilled to welcome Ms. O'Connor as our Artist in Residence for 2013," said Jochen Wierich, Curator of Art. "Her Scenes combine performance art and photography to create a world that is magical and dream-like. The Scene that she is creating at Cheekwood will be the first one built entirely outside of her own studio in Atlanta. No doubt, she'll have a chance to explore new possibilities within Cheekwood's garden setting, utilize natural elements and tell a compelling story through her art. We look forward to giving O'Connor a dynamic place to work and can't wait to see what she will bring to Cheekwood and the Nashville arts community."
O'Connor's Scenes series spans the last seven years, combining elements of still life, portraiture and landscape to produce unique and evocative works of installation art. Working in the style of a tableau vivant, or "living picture," the artist constructs dramatic and fanciful scenes using everyday objects and handmade sculptural elements. When the setting is complete, she incorporates a live model into the scene in an active role, using the human presence as a catalyst in telling the installation's story. O'Connor then captures the scene with a large-format 8 x 10 camera, giving each story a second life as a photograph. "I think of them as suspended narratives like a movie still or the after-image of a dream," says Wierich.


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GR hospitals turning away residency applicants
Medical schools are churning out new physicians to get ahead of a projected shortage in 2020.
(As seen on WZZM TV 13) With expectations of a U.S. physician shortage by 2020 and medical schools increasing the number of graduating students, West Michigan is beginning to feel the effect of supply and demand. Read More


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In this context the aim of the symposium is to evaluate potentials and deficits in civic organizations concerning urban and regional development in the USA. Presently in Germany, the locus of debate is whether the possibility exists for citizens to be 'activated' in civil society engagement and how this could be instituted. Comparatively, in the USA, there is a long tradition of civic actor engagement in urban and regional development. The examples from the USA therefore demonstrate what may be possible yet also problematic if civic organizations take over a central role in shaping urban and regional development.
The symposium will be a platform for an exchange of ideas and an opportunity for researchers and students to network with others who work within the field of civic society and planning in Germany and in the USA. Furthermore, the conference will be useful for practitioners in nonprofit organizations, governmental planning, private enterprises and private planning offices. Hence a dynamic interaction between academic and practical debates will be possible. Conference papers will be presented by well-known researchers as well as academics who have recently entered the field.
The symposium program and further information you can find under www.hoffnungstraeger-zivilgesellschaft.de/en
Conference languages are German and English. Translation into English and German will be provided for all presentations and discussions.
Registration deadline: October 31st, 2006.
Registration fee: 50 € / reduced 25 € (students)
Presented by
The Schinkel-Centre for Architecture, Urban Studies, and Preservation of Monuments and Historic Buildings at the Technical University of Berlin
in co-operation with
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The School of Urban Renewal and Development, Department for Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University Berlin
The School of Urban Renewal, Department of Architecture, Urban Planning & Landscape Planning at the University of Kassel


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Women Poets at Barnard 2016 Poetry Prize
The Barnard Women Poets Prize is given for an exceptional second collection of poems written by an American woman who has already published one book of poetry (in an edition of 500 copies or more).
- Prize — $1,500 and publication by W.W. Norton & Co.
- Entry fee — $20, payable in check to Women Poets at Barnard.
- Submissions — Accepted from August 1 to October 15, 2015.
- Judge — Claudia Rankine.
The manuscript to be considered (three copies), cover letter (naming the title and publisher of the applicant's first collection), and entry fee ($20, payable in check to Women Poets at Barnard) should be sent to:
Women Poets at Barnard
English Department
Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
The winner will be announced in April 2016.
The contest is open to U.S. women poets who have already published one book of poetry. The first collection should have been a full-length book, printed in an edition of 500 or more copies. Chapbooks do not qualify.
Although a writer may submit a manuscript that has been entered in other contests, any manuscript under option to another publisher is not eligible. (Please note that any entries that are encumbered will be disqualified.) Page-limit is not specified. Because the prize is given to a poet who has already published a first book, the manuscripts are not read anonymously. Every qualified manuscript will be read with care by the panel of judges and the chief judge, who changes every year. The chief judge for the 2016 contest is Claudia Rankine.
Submissions will be accepted between August 1, 2015 and October 15, 2015. (Please note that submissions received before August 1, 2015, will not be accepted.) The winner will be contacted directly in the spring of 2016.
Email questions to Saskia Hamilton at email@example.com.
The contest was not conducted during the 2014-15 academic year. The winner of the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize was Sandra Lim. Louise Glück served as judge. For more details, read the entire press release.
For more about the history of the Prize or to order past publications, click here.
page last updated 6/9/15


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TRENTON — The New Jersey Department of Health's Office of Minority and Multicultural Health has awarded five community organizations $90,000 to try and fight chronic illness in minority communities.
The five organizations receiving $18,000 each are:
CompleteCare Health Network in Bridgeton, Friends of Grace in Englewood, Hunterdon Prevention Resources in Flemington, The Sickle Cell Association of New Jersey and University Correctional HealthCare both in Newark.
The money, according to a press release from the Department of Health, will be spent on a series of six-week workshops for those with chronic conditions, including asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and HIV/AIDS.
The "Take Control of your Health" workshops are designed to improve health and quality of life of those who participate in the program.
"Improving the health of those with chronic illnesses is one of the major goals of public health officials across the nation," Health Commissioner Mary O'Dowd said in the press release. "Empowering people to manage and improve their own health is an effective way to institute long-lasting and meaningful change. Successful evidence-based programs, like Take Control of Your Health, should be encouraged and expanded if possible."
Take Control of Your Health began in New Jersey in 2007 and more than 5,000 people have participated in the program, which, according to Stanford University, reduces fatigue, health distress and increases confidence in people's ability to manage their chronic conditions.
The problem of chronic disease, according to the health department is pervasive across the state. Heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are responsible for about 58 percent of deaths in New Jersey.
The program is meant to teach those living with chronic conditions how to manage their symptoms, deal with emotional distress, relaxation techniques and how to communicate with health care professionals. Nutrition education is also emphasized, the release stated.


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Women's Basketball Defeats Ohio 83-60
Dec. 3, 2011
PITTSBURGH - Alex Gensler scored 22 points and Wumi Agunbiade recorded a double-double of 15 points and tied a career-high with 16 rebounds as the Duquesne women's basketball team defeated Ohio 83-60 on Saturday afternoon.
Orsi Szecsi was one rebound shy of a double-double with 15 points and nine boards. Vanessa Abel added 15 for the Dukes who improve to 5-1 on the season.
Shavon Robinson scored 19 points and Porsha Harris 15 for OU who fell to 3-3 on the year.
DU, who led from start-to-finish, opened up an early 15-4 lead by the 14:42 mark of the first half while grabbing the game's first nine rebounds and 13 of the first 16.
The Bobcats were able to cut the Dukes' lead to six points at 24-18 by the 6:55 mark, but Duquesne responded with a 15-2 run capped by a Gensler 3-pointer with 2:35 left in the half making the score 39-22.
Duquesne would take a 40-25 lead into halftime.
The Dukes held the Bobcats to 33 percent shooting in the second half (10-of-30) while making 19-of-32 (59 percent) as the closest Ohio would come would be 15 points midway through the half. The scoring ended on a Stasia King layup with 23 seconds remaining to give Duquesne its largest lead of the contest, 23 points at 83-60.
"No doubt this was a good win today - the one thing that stands out to me when I look at the stat sheet is the rebounding margin," said head coach Suzie McConnell-Serio.
Duquesne outrebounded Ohio 47-33. This was the first time this season that the Dukes have outrebounded its opponent.
"Players are earning their minutes right now off the bench. Ahjah Hall gave us great minutes with her energy. She definitely made things happen today."
Up next will be Miami University for Kids Education Day on Tuesday afternoon. This game had a special start time of 11:00 a.m.


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Sony Xperia M ReviewSony Xperia M 7.3
Call Quality
Battery life
The 1750mAh battery on the Xperia M lasts us two days with average use, and even a bit more if we were more frugal with calls and gaming. Official quoted talk time stands at the average 9 hours on 3G. The battery is also user replaceable and that's a plus.
The Sony Xperia M is a phone with good looks, streamlined user interface that we actually like, and a powerful chip for its class. Not a bad combination, is it? It has its downsides - we wish the screen was a bit better, but our biggest complaint right now is price. The handset sells for prices of between $200 and $250 off contract, and that is a bit steeper than we'd like for such a device.
On Android, its biggest rival would be the larger, but cheaper 4.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Core. Even the similar yet larger 4.3" Sony Xperia L sells for around the same price.
If you are willing to experiment with a different platform, the Windows Phone 8-based Nokia Lumia 520 brings a very identical package at around half the price and looks like a much better deal.
All in all, we like where Sony is headed with the Xperia M, an affordable device with good looks and solid hardware like this one could become the staple in its smartphone lineup, but it needs to come down in price first.
Software version on the reviewed unit:
Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean
Baseband version: 2.11.J.1.18_8x30_M:172136.41.21.000327_A:172136.41.21.002465
Kernel version: 3.4.0
Build date: Thu Jun 20 15:24:21 CST 2013
Build number: 15.1.A.1.9
- It's a looker - compact and stylish
- Above average performance for its class, 1GB of RAM
- Good 1750mAh battery
- Average display - dim and with poor viewing angles
- Only 2GB of user available storage
- Disappointing call quality
36 Comments
1. wicpromd (Posts: 266; Member since: 20 Aug 2013)
3. PunyPoop (Posts: 752; Member since: 18 Jan 2013)
PA you\'ve just proven that you love SAMSUNG.. LOL The Galaxy Core got 8 ratings? REALLY???
5. LetsBeHonest (Posts: 1442; Member since: 04 Jun 2013)
I prefer this over galaxy core any day.
8. taikucing (unregistered)
sssshhhh... don't tell anyone. PA is paid by Samsung
12. PapaSmurf (Posts: 10456; Member since: 14 May 2012)
If a phone has terrible call quality when that's the MAIN function of a PHONE, I have little to no sympathy for the score it receives.
14. PunyPoop (Posts: 752; Member since: 18 Jan 2013)
15. buccob (Posts: 2564; Member since: 19 Jun 2012)
why do you even bother being in this specific review? you have no sympathy for Sony whatsoever... go read Apple, Samsung, LG news...
I have heard "bad quality calls" before I experience a good call first handed... and that also depends on you country's network operators... So this midrange phone is still better than many at this price point...
18. yudi.nemesis (Posts: 1127; Member since: 14 Mar 2013)
This site can do better review than PA and they said Xperia M has good call quality.
2. ortax123 (Posts: 3; Member since: 11 Sep 2013)
I have a few questions for your review of Sony Xperia M:
1.What is the firmware version?
2 What is the version of the phone? C1904 or 1905? Which is a variation: the PM-0490-BV AAA or PM-0490-BV AAB (the information is on the phone under the battery)
4. LetsBeHonest (Posts: 1442; Member since: 04 Jun 2013)
Its a nice device but those bezels are too huge... Back looks better than front.
still not a bad look though....
6. sri_tech (Posts: 188; Member since: 21 May 2013)
Sony devices looks great and this one has much better specs than many other phones for the price.
But they need to get good displays on these phones. I dont care about viewing angles but all their displays look washed out and very dull. Its the same with Xperia L, SP and even Z.
Also, why only 4GB internal memory when much cheaper Lumia 520 has 8 GB?
7. ortax123 (Posts: 3; Member since: 11 Sep 2013)
When you add video of review?
9. artealis (Posts: 98; Member since: 15 Dec 2010)
what about the wifi signal strengh? most of xperia line up have bad wifi signal reception like xperia SP. PA you should add wifi signal strengh too in your review
23. Kalevro (Posts: 56; Member since: 11 Sep 2011)
Dude it has dual band wi-fi connection. Read the thing
10. kabhijeet.16 (Posts: 805; Member since: 05 Dec 2012)
PA.. Dont compare mid & low end phones to high end phones. You compare it directly with high end devices & rate then low. Consider the price point at which a device is being sold. As far as I am concerned, this phone has only one con-- limited storage for apps. Other than that I dont expect them to give an awesome screen at this price point. I can easily give it 8-8.5...
11. itsdeepak4u2000 (Posts: 3718; Member since: 03 Nov 2012)
Atleast this time PA reviewed fairly and that's why it got 7.3, thanks to Victor. Otherwise I was thinking about 6 before clicking on this title. Sigh...
13. buccob (Posts: 2564; Member since: 19 Jun 2012)
I agree, this author is a bit fair unlike the other Sony reviewer... Anyway the rating was ok, specially if the Call quality is like the article says...
My mother is looking for a new phone in this price range and this is definitely the first that comes to my mind... and maybe the Galaxy S3 Mini...
16. itsjustJOH (Posts: 232; Member since: 18 Oct 2012)
This is surprisingly unbiased and well-reviewed.
21. AnukulVcool (unregistered)
regarding call quality I would like to add that there is a equaliser for it too, change it to bright and it will be much better
22. ortax123 (Posts: 3; Member since: 11 Sep 2013)
24. DukeX (Posts: 327; Member since: 28 Aug 2013)
Should have increased the clock rate to 1.5ghz. It's no excuse for low end to midrange phones to have anything lower than that now. The antutu score would have been better.
34. Santi05 (Posts: 2; Member since: 11 Oct 2013)
for it being 1 GHz.. does it really lay an impact on its performance?
for instance, being slow.. or hang?
39. Amosthecoolboy (Posts: 9; Member since: 14 Feb 2013)
it is dual core
25. hms2407 (Posts: 94; Member since: 25 Apr 2013)
Oh come on PA,you gave xperia l 6.5 which has a bigger screen,better cpu,higher res camera and more storage and you gave this a 7.5....wtf is wrong with you
27. buccob (Posts: 2564; Member since: 19 Jun 2012)
different reviewers with different opinions and different standards for rating...
that is what is wrong with them...
Anyway Xperia L should be also a close 7.5... it has a less lasting battery and the size of the phone is too big for a 4.3" screen... Also the Xperia M supposedly has MHL whereas the L does not.
26. Apian (Posts: 8; Member since: 12 Sep 2013)
Want this Phone...
28. BASKARAN (Posts: 1; Member since: 26 Aug 2013)
Galaxy core entered and sold good in the market before the Xperia M entry. But the moment M entered the market, the Galaxy core's sales is nothing but just hampered. The Phone with low call quality, 7.3 rating is not available at any outlets in the city whereas awesome phone with 8 ratings are there for nobody to buy. PA just rocks with your review. Come on guys, i expect please put ratings for samsung models 11 for 10 in the future...10 out of 10 for being samsung and extra 1 for the payment you received from samsung.
29. rajesh.a (Posts: 1; Member since: 28 Sep 2013)
hi help me to choose between sony xperia M and galaxy core... which is best i want to buy ..pls help me
30. Apian (Posts: 8; Member since: 12 Sep 2013)
Galaxy Core Very Nice
31. Santi05 (Posts: 2; Member since: 11 Oct 2013)
The latest, Android Kit Kat available for Sony Xperia M ?????
32. AGSUPER (Posts: 1; Member since: 12 Oct 2013)
I am stuck between Galaxy Core and Xperia M. I am in marketing job and customers often twist what has been discussed and agreed over phone. Thus my tie breaker will be call recording quality. Which one of these two record better calls? Whether the voice of the person on the other side is clear? Whether the person on the other side of the call comes to know of the recording... i mean.. is there any beep sound? Need help. Pls suggest. I want a dual sim phone with best call recording.
33. Ankit12 (Posts: 2; Member since: 14 Oct 2013)
I am confused between the phones sony xperia M and Samsung Galaxy Core. Both looks to have the same features expect internal memory and screen size ( 4' vs 4.3'). The price difference between the 2 phones is 1500 rs. But i am stilling doubtful about the camera quality of sony. The earlier experince of Sony xperia J was not nyc. I did compare the phones on flipkart. Please suggest
35. Ankit12 (Posts: 2; Member since: 14 Oct 2013)
Finally i bought Samsung Galaxy Core and looks to be very good in all the aspects except battery life...good buy in that range.....
36. kumarmanish (Posts: 2; Member since: 22 Oct 2013)
I am confused between the phones sony xperia M and Samsung Galaxy Core. Both looks to have the same features expect internal memory and screen size ( 4' vs 4.3'). The price difference between the 2 phones is 1500 rs. But i am stilling doubtful about the camera quality of sony. The earlier experince of Sony xperia J was not nyc. I did compare the phones on flipkart. Please suggest
37. kumarmanish (Posts: 2; Member since: 22 Oct 2013)
i am stilling doubtful about the camera quality of sony. Please suggest
38. JaiSagar (Posts: 2; Member since: 17 Nov 2013)
Hi All
I am using this Sony Xperia M Dual (WHITE) for the last 1 month and so far feeling good in major aspects design, looks, technical working, speed, processing etc.
A few things that needs attention:
1. The data cum charger cable is too short, could have been a little more longer.
2. Restart option is not present, every time have to shutdown and then start manually.
3. Camera quality front and back has made me more sad. SONY the brand has failed to keep the quality of camera.
4. Limiting of applications is absent, as in Samsung and LG one can limit the number of applications this helps the life of battery and processor to be more faster.
5. Any application in the handset doesn't get closed even after the exit. But remains on at the back end and one has to manually end it one by one by going to recent open app.
6. After 99% of battery charge the 1% takes huge time.
7. Tried to register the mobile on website, says invalid serial and product number. Customer service asks to go to service center for every query that can be easily handled then and there over the phone.
Sony Xperia MOS: Android 4.3 4.1
view full specs
|4.0 inches, 480 x 854 pixels (245 ppi) TFT
|5 megapixels
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus, Dual-core, 1000 MHz, Krait processor
|4.88 x 2.44 x 0.37 inches
(124 x 62 x 9.3 mm)
4.06 oz (115 g)
|1750 mAh, 10.3 hours talk time


text:
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Trade paperback. As a family of New England farmers slowly disintegrates, its members struggle valiantly against the powerful forces of loneliness and necessity, seeking a sense of home and place forever lost. Winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. 308 pp. Near fine. .ISBN # 0-02-0811853
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'Collected Stories' collaboration an uneven read
Neatly arranged nesting dolls - appearing on an upstage table in a Greenwich Village apartment - tell us a lot about the theme and structure of Donald Margulies' "Collected Stories." Under C. Michael Wright's direction, the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and Madison's Forward Theater Company opened a collaborative production of Margulies' play Friday night.
Author Ruth Steiner (Sarah Day) has lived in that apartment for more than 30 years. Star-struck Lisa Morrison (Laura Frye), the young writer who bursts into Ruth's life in the first scene, is Ruth's latest protégée - another nesting doll aspiring to replicate, on a smaller scale, her master's form. »Read Full Article
Video: The Concert Corner - Recapping the Grammys and Matchbox Twenty
So the Grammy recap, the photo gallery and a five memorable Grammy moments blog post weren't the last word on this year's awards. During the Concert Corner this week with CineStars Brittany Umar, we talked about the show's strongest performers. Also discussed: Matchbox Twenty and Phillip Phillips sets at a sold-out Riverside Theater Saturday, and a look at concerts this week.
Banner weeks ahead for Wisconsin books, including the Scott Walker vs. unions faceoff
In the next few weeks, a bounty of nonfiction books by Wisconsin writers will be published, including an account by two Journal Sentinel reporters of the kerfuffle that began in Madison in March 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker and public employe unions battled over changes in state law that ultimately scuttled public employee bargaining rights.
"More than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin," by Jason Stein and Patrick Marley, will go on sale circa March 22 at local bookstores and online book vendors. Published by the University of Wisconsin Press, "More Than They Bargained For" offers a detailed play-by-play account of the Madison drama, including the Capitol occupation by protestors and the runaway Democratic legislators. Stein and Marley, who work out of the Journal Sentinel's Madison bureau, have added fresh reporting and interviewing to the work they did on the spot. The reporters will have a book launch event 7 p.m. March 26 at Boswell Book Co., 2559 N. Downer Ave. »Read Full Blog Post(14)
Esquire magazine reports bin Laden's slayer offered new identity in Milwaukee
Did the American military offer the man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden a new identity "driving beer truck in Milwaukee"?
Here's what a story from the March issue of Esquire is saying. »Read Full Article(6)
Charles Allis Art Museum serves tea with the Mad Hatter
Tails are optional, but hats are a must at The Charles Allis Art Museum's Mad Hatter Tea on March 9 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Guests can join "Alice in Wonderland" characters The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, Alice, and The Red Queen for tea, tea sandwiches and sweets, featuring Rishi Tea and Lee John's Catering. »Read Full Article
Big Sean, Rufus Wainwright, Fountains of Wayne among new Milwaukee show announcements
Milwaukee venues kicked off Monday morning announcing a diverse array of concerts for this spring, ranging from a solo performance from torch singer Rufus Wainwright to a show with rapper Big Sean.
On Tap for Today: The Bucks, identity problems and more
Welcome back, Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
We offer a few waves to keep that weekend spirit. For instance, the Milwaukee Bucks take on the Washington Wizards at 7 p.m. at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. »Read Full Blog Post


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"W" GradesPage address: http://www.mnsu.edu/registrar/wgrades.html
Grades of "W" are placed on courses to indicate that they are in withdrawal status.
Courses are in withdrawal status for one of the following reasons:
- they have been dropped after the fifth day of a term
- the student went through the process of Official Withdrawal and had all of their courses for a term dropped
Students are not enrolled in courses with grades of "W", but these courses are part of the students' record and are considered attempted credits. These courses do affect a student's completion rate and also appear on transcripts.
The University policy on withdrawn courses and "W" grades is detailed in the following document from the Office of Academic Affairs:
- [PDF] "W" grades on transcripts (13 KiB)
Questions concerning "W" grades should be directed to
room: WA 132; phone: 389-2252


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The purpose of the Office of Continuing Medical Education is to provide educational activities that enhance the knowledge, skills and competencies required by health professionals. CME staff will design, develop, implement and evaluate educational programming that supports the continuing professional development of physicians to better serve patients, the public and the profession.
Content Areas:
Target Audience:
The target audience includes physicians representing primary and specialty care as well as other healthcare professionals practicing within the Quillen College of Medicine, in communities in the region of Upper Northeast Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Southwestern Virginia and Western North Carolina. National, and in some cases international educational activities will also be conducted.
Types of Activities:
Expected Results:
Approved 1-10-13