Muniwireless provides a link to a page on the San Francisco TechConnect web site where you can download the various responses to the city’s Request for Information.
From the TechConnect site:
The responses fall into two categories as described in the RFI/C: (1) comments by respondents that had no commercial interest in the project and/or only wished to provide comments on the RFI/C or the TechConnect initiative and (2) responses by respondents that have a commercial interest in the project, e.g., vendors and service providers. Some of the respondents with a commercial interest in the project alleged that part of their responses were confidential or proprietary. In these cases, only the parts onf the response that are not alleged by the respondent to be confidential or proprietary have been included.
The responses have been aggegated into zipped files due to the large volume of data.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 9:15 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The Consumers Union has developed what they call an “animated music video” railing against media ownership. (You can find the video here — but be forewarned that the site will pop open a screen asking you to sign a petition for the FCC to hold hearings before it changes media ownership rules. You don’t have to sign the petition to watch the video.) Called “The Tower,” the video features a funny little man seeking music and television programs.
But this man’s monotonous and offensive entertainment fare is under the control of “The Tower,” a seemingly evil transmitter operated by ugly fat-cat conglomerate executives. Hmmm…not subtle and we therefore wonder how effective the video is. Here’s a sample of the lyrics written by a group called the Austin Lounge Lizards:
Verse 1
I was rolling down the highway trying to find a decent station
Scanning up and down through all the format variations
AnguishedArtist103 was sensitive and bland
WrinkledHippie96 was playing “Cowgirl in the Sand”
The Bridge, The Edge, The Hat sounded all the same, of course
‘Cause they were emanating from one giant central source
Chorus It was the Tower, Big Media Power
Beaming down from heaven every minute, every hour
Pervasive and insistent,
Abandon your resistance to the Tower
Verse 2
I got back home, sat in my chair and turned on my TV
Two suits reviewed a movie from the parent company
The woman said she loved it; the man thought it was great
The DVD would come out soon and they could hardly wait
They kindly thanked each other for this frank exchange of views
Then it was back to fake reality and infotainment news
Chorus
It was the Tower, Big Media Power
Beaming down from heaven every minute, every hour
Invasive and persistent,
Abandon your resistance to the Tower
Bridge The Tower is a trademark of the Babel Corporation
Which acquired Hubris Publishing for market integration
Owned by Infowebnet Systems, a Foodco Company
A member of the Alphamega Corporate family
Muniwireless reports that:
“Milwaukee officials will announce today that a local company plans to invest between $20 million and $25 million in creating a citywide wireless computer network, which would put the city at the forefront of a national push to create such systems,” says the Journal Sentinel.
The Milwaukee newspaper says:
Midwest Fiber Networks would construct the system at no cost to taxpayers - a key selling point for the cash-strapped city. The firm and its partners could even end up paying the city money to lease space in the city-owned underground conduit system. Officials could also seek free wireless access in all parks or housing projects as part of the arrangement.
Midwest Fiber Networks would not provide the Internet service. Rather, it would build the infrastructure and then sell air time to firms that provide Internet access…”We think we’re in a better position here because there’s a head start on the infrastructure,” said firm partner Nik Ivancevic, citing the firm’s investment in fiber-optic cables in the city.
Midwest Fiber is a 4-year-old firm, born in the high-tech incubator at the Milwaukee County research park. It has about 70 employees. Firm officials said they are in negotiation with other Wisconsin cities for such wireless networks. It was partnered with AOL in Madison to create the system there, but that system stalled when AOL pulled out of the project.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 8:56 PM | Print | Comments (0)
At Telepocalypse, Martin Geddes makes what he calls an “outrageous suggestion” that “[t]he ability to access Internet content and services is the new Right to Bear Arms.”
There’s been a lot of press in the last year or so about port blocking, open access, Net Freedoms, and so on…Stop for a moment. Why do you, personally, care about this issue? Telecom isn’t the only industry with distribution bottlenecks, significant market power, and cross-subsidy between the stages of production…Yet telecom incites such great passion in intelligent people…What’s going on?
I think I’ve finally worked out why. It’s David Isenberg’s elephant in the corner — what he ambiguously calls Freedom to Connect. Most of these arguments attempt to build a logical economic thesis about why we do or don’t have the correct balance between price discrimination, competition and common carriage. But it increasingly misses the point. We sense there’s a deeper, more troubling, aspect to getting cut off from part of the conversation.
Whilst nebulous and fluffy, it’s all about democracy. The rest is post hoc rationalization of our more fundamental beliefs about how a 21st century society needs to be wired up to work. And my thesis is that we are underestimating the importance of this political (as opposed to economic) side of the debate.
The founders of the United States of America in their wisdom saw the seizure of excessive power by government as a central risk. To counteract this, they ensured the general populace would always be sufficiently armed. This gives any putative dictator or tyrant pause for thought before exercising the machinery of government violence for undemocratic ends.
We’re moving from a society where physical force was the prime means of coercion to one where ideas have ascendancy. Physical force doesn’t scale well as a means of subjugation…Building tyranny is harder when the populace is armed with good information. It’s not impossible; indeed, a tyranny of the majority is still a major risk. But when I can have a cheap encrypted Skype conversation with Iranians, Syrians, and Mexicans, something qualitative has changed.
Consider a populace that wants to rise up against its political masters. We’re already at the point where the government response isn’t to take away the populace’s arms, but to take away its means of communication. Militias don’t congregate in the woods and more, they start their own Yahoo! group and MoveOn and Meetup from there.
There’s more at stake here than cheap phone calls and unlimited TV channels. Cheap airlines have done more for European cohesion and understanding than decades of political exhortation. Cheap, ubiquitous and unfiltered communications are becoming a prerequisite of a pluralist participative democracy. Societies that fail to encourage the free flow of information will suffer because ingrained interest groups will ensure the rules are set up to perpetuate their privileges. When you can’t make a Skype call, you’re losing something more than money.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 8:36 PM | Print | Comments (0)
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