isen.blog

Incoming email, quoted verbatim:

You have covered the controversy at Wilton High School concerning the students’ attempts to perform “Voices in Conflict,” a play about the Iraq War.

We wanted to let you know that Music Theatre International, the Broadway musical licensing agency, has now voiced its support for the students, as well . . .

Music Theatre International
421 West 54th Street, Second Floor
New York, New York 10019
(212) 541-4684 FAX: (212) 397-4684
Freddie Gershon
Chairman

March 28, 2007

To: The Advanced Theatre Students of Wilton High School,

Congratulations to each of you!

MTI has determined that you collectively and individually receive the MUSIC THEATRE INTERNATIONAL COURAGE IN THEATER AWARD. This is the first such award in the 54 year history of Music Theatre International.

MTI was founded by Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway Composer/Lyricist
FRANK LOESSER in whose honor we have established this award. Frank believed that High School productions keep theater alive in America serving to enlighten, educate as well as entertain. Although Mr. Loesser’s musicals were not about war (GUYS &DOLLS, THE MOST HAPPY FELLA, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS and others) he and his colleagues in the Broadway community and the company he created to serve the schools of America with theater materials, would be proud of your class’s approach to theatre as well as your passion and commitment to the production which you created.

Schools and Theater Departments with outstanding performances or those demonstrating adventuresome spirit, inventiveness and daring through their stage productions have been recognized in different ways by MTI in the past.
However, we are aware that theater is not just about acting, singing, dancing and excelling in performance. It is also about positive risk taking for students, working as a community and utilizing theatre skills, to present points of view on the stage which comment on the world in which we live. In doing so, they provoke discussion, engage an audience and stimulate their colleagues/fellow students/and the audience to reflect on what they saw and heard long after they have left the theater. That, in turn, should result in healthy dialogue of differing points of view.

WILTON HIGH SCHOOL’s advanced theater students' “non-performance” of their original theater piece is unique in our experience of licensing over 500,000 high school performances in the last two decades and deserving of special recognition.

MTI’s very first COURAGE IN THEATER AWARD therefore goes to the members of the advanced theater class…not for a performance or a production, but rather in recognition of your actions in having collaborated in the creation of a stage piece on a sensitive but germane subject titled: VOICES IN CONFLICT.

Music Theatre International congratulates each of you.

Technorati Tags: Censorship, FirstAmendment, Freedom, Iraq, War

Polite, conventional speech isn't speech that needs Constitutional protection.
As I blogged here, Voices in Conflict, a play about the Iraq war developed by a Wilton CT drama class has been censored by the school principal. A friend reported that it was available here, but the actual script, both an early version and "the current version" are replaced by a message that says,

We've been advised to take down the script for now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Fortunately, another friend saved these scripts, and I've posted them. Here's the Early Version, [.pdf] and here is the most current, March 25 Version [.pdf].

I don't see any copyright claims (or any other attribution, for that matter) on them, and I am posting them for non-commercial, educational purposes, i.e., so people can see what the Wilton High School censorship case is all about. I believe that my posting of these texts is covered by Fair Use.

Even in the current version, which was the result of a lot of negotiation among the pro- and anti-war students and faculty, the truths of war are evident. For example:

I am not going to dishonor the effort in saving my life by saying “woe as me I got no legs.” Well I got one knee. There are guys who have none, guys who are blind. I have my arms, my face, my brain. This is a pretty good life I have compared to what it could be. Plus they make prosthetic high heels. I checked into it. Not three-inch stilettos, but at least an inch or two of heel. I’ll be good to go.

and

I see this woman walking out in all black, shes got a bag in her arm, shes wearing a berka. Uh and shes walking out towards the armoured vehicle . . . and i went, “ok one or two things are gonna happen: this woman is gonna put up her hands and surrender and start talking to the marines or she’s gonna walk up to these guys and explode. And if she blows up, she’s gonna kill a bunch of those guys or wound a bunch of them. I’ve got a clear shot with nothing behind her. And this was all, i mean (snaps fingers continually, while nodding head) the was spilt second ya know? It happens all that fast. Pulled up my rifle, took two shots at her. (takes deep breath) I know i probably missed the first shot, the second shot, I’m pretty sure i hit her. And as soon as that second shot went off, the guys on the other vehicle opened up and they cut her down. She fell to the dirt, and as she fell, she had a a white flag in her hand. At that moment there, I lost it, I threw my weapon down on the deck of the vehicle and I was crying . . .

and

in certain areas, uh, everything was considered hostile. Taking fire from that general direction there are fifty frigging people there, it's one guy shooting at us, y'know we can't find that one guy… Frigging kill everything y'know, hah, lay fire down there- suppression fire- area target uhm, y'know… You don't think, 'Oh, okay, there's a lady in a pink dress, let's take her out. There's a kid, y'know, let's take him out. No, we're taking fire from over there, blanket the frigging area… (long pause) It works. It's effective, y'know, you don't take fire from over there anymore.Hah, y'know, threat's eliminated and, uh, you keep, you keep going. We all become casualties of war- who we are when we leave is not who we are when and if we're lucky to physically return, because psychologically, you, you, you're completely changed by it.

I can see that this upsets some people. It SHOULD upset us all. But that's no reason to suppress it. Polite, conventional speech isn't speech that needs our protection. Speech like this does.

Technorati Tags: Censorship, Constitution, FirstAmendment, Freedom, Iraq, War

"Our school is all about censorship . . . [p]eople don't talk about the things that matter."

James Presson, 16, a student at Wilton (Connecticut) High School and a member of the cast of "Voices of Conflict," a play about the war in Iraq developed by the school's Advanced Theater Class and then cancelled by Principal Timothy Canty before it was performed. [Link to story in International Herald Tribune 3/24/07.]

Technorati Tags: Censorship, Freedom, Organizational Culture, Press, QuoteOfNote

Here's a list of the patents at issue. Does anybody know which three were upheld?
Anybody have a pointer to the court order?

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6104711
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6430275
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6282574
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6128304
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6137869
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6359880
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6298062

Update: Here's the court case number: 06-cv-682

Update 2: Says here:

The infringed patents cover a method for translating calls between an Internet network and the standard telephone network, call-waiting features and wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, handsets. Vonage was cleared of infringing two patents related to billing systems designed to prevent fraud.

My initial hypothesis, then, is that the Method for Translating Calls is Patent 6104711 (but it could be Patent 6282574), the Call Waiting is Patent 6298062, and the Wi-Fi claim might be Patent 6359880, but it sure would be nice to have the Court Order.

Technorati Tags: CrowdSourcing, intellectualproperty, Verizon, Vonage

I've just posted these two items at the F2C: Freedom to Connect website:

Check out Michael Cervieri's very nicely done videos of Yochai Benkler's F2C keynote, Cory Ondrejka's F2C presentation on Second Life, and several other videos of the Wealth of Networks panel (look for these on the page with Yochai's video). Michael promises a few more soon. Nice work Michael!!!

Dean Landsman has done it again with his way-too-flattering blog post about F2C. (Read it if you want to know how superfractaculorenious it was this year, or if you're searching for details of musician Howard Levy's formative years.)

Technorati Tags: F2C, F2C2007, HowardLevy, DeanLandsman, SecondLife, WealthofNetworks, YochaiBenkler

Canadian telcos are cranking up a fight to roll back Network Neutrality under the guise of, "a greater role in content delivery for Telus and Bell Canada." Don't Canadians like being ahead of the pack? Doug Alder writes, "I fear this right wing government has already made up its mind , and not for the better."

Michael Geist has blogged about it cluefully and in great detail here.

Canada, of course, is the country where Telus blocked a telco worker's strike website, and, incidentally, hundreds of other sites. In addition, Michael Geist writes,

Shaw attempted to levy surcharges for Internet telephony services, Rogers quietly limited bandwidth for legitimate peer-to-peer software applications, and Videotron mused publicly about establishing a new Internet transmission tariff that would require content creators to pay millions for the privilege of transmitting their content.

It'd be a shame to see Canada go down the (series of) tubes on this. Right now they're the best counter-argument to the mostly bogus claim that, "Japan and Korea are more wired because they're more densely populated."

Technorati Tags: Canada, NetworkNeutrality

"Fear not, network neutrality fans: Google is still on your side, and is working hard to make sure its sometimes mixed messages on the topic are more harmonious in the future."

Paul Kapustka on GigaOm posting. Via Tim Karr.

[Actually I love it when pieces of the vigorous discussion inside Google come flying over the Googleplex walls! [e.g., link, link] I betcha Verizon employees have a lot of views on Net Neutrality; the whole Internet would be richer if we had a chance to see some of that discussion too . . . -- David I]

Technorati Tags: Google, NetworkNeutrality, QuoteOfNote, Verizon

I have been busy! So it is old news that my previous post has been superseded (but see my update in red).

Meanwhile, on March 14 Tim Karr from savetheinternet.com called Google's PR person to get the straight dope on Google's Net Neutrality position.

Tim quotes the Google rep saying,

We strongly believe that Congress must take action to ensure a free and open Internet, in the face of a highly concentrated broadband market. Furthermore, Google’s position — which we testified to last year in Congress — is that broadband network operators should not be permitted to charge any content owner extra fees or extra tolls. We continue to support net neutrality legislation by Senators Dorgan and Snowe, and by Representative Markey, and we remain steadfast members of the coalition supporting net neutrality.

This is consistent with Google's "don't be evil" stance, even if Google has the financial clout to make whatever non-neutral deal any Internet access provider requires. Google CEO Eric Schmidt agrees, saying, "The curious thing about Net Neutrality is that if there's any site that could afford [to pay higher telco fees for favorably discriminatory service] it would be Google."

My previous declarations remain unchanged that Network Neutrality is, at its heart, an issue of Free Speech and Freedom of the Press, and its beneficiaries are citizens, end-users, innovators and littlecos, not the Google v. Telco conflict the popular press depicts.

[Of course, the telcos and cablecos see it totally as a business issue. To them, our First Amendment concerns and our worry about suppressed innovation are just not on their radar screen. Aye, there's the rub.]

It is likely that I'll be seeing Google Senior Policy Counsel Andrew McLaughlin, the original source of Drew Clark's GigaOm story on Google's putative change of heart, in a few weeks, and I'll ask him myself, face to face, what he said, and what message he meant to convey. Stay tuned.

I note further that I had a face-to-face conversation with Bob Kahn, a few weeks after his January 9, 2007 talk at the Computer History Museum was noisily reported as a repudiation of Network Neutrality. Kahn told me that his remarks had been completely taken out of context, and that he did not mean to make any declaration against Net Neutrality.

Technorati Tags: EricSchmidt, Google, NetworkNeutrality, FirstAmendment, savetheinternet

. . . the grass gets trampled.

Google's chief counsel Andrew McLaughlin has done the predictable, weakening Google's stance on Network Neutrality.

In fact, I predicted it more than a year ago when I wrote:

Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and Skype,
They’re already successful, they can make deals for those pipes.
But when I want to publish stuff in my blog
It will not be OK for you to once again pay.
We already pay for our Internet connection.
We don’t need to subsidize a dying industry’s obsession!
If looking at my blog cost you an extra dime
You’d probably find another way to spend your time.

More importantly, when you hackers field a fragile new app
You don’t want it blocked by Ed Whitacre’s crap,
Cause when Whitacre says, “They’re not going to use my pipes for free”
He’s not talking about Them, he’s talking about Me.
He’s talking about Us, that should be plain to see.

Let me say it another way: Network Neutrality is not about Google paying more. It is about our freedom of speech, our freedom to innovate, and the public resource we call The Internet.

The Save The Internet Coalition has been scrupulous about not taking a dime from the bigcos. It, not Google or Yahoo or Microsoft or Skype, is the right place to put your Network Neutrality efforts!

UPDATE: In this video, which aired on Bloomberg on March 10 & 11, Google CEO Eric Schmidt agrees with me, saying NN is not in Google's economic interests, but Google supports it anyway.

The Net Neutrality part of the video begins at about 11:00.
My transcript begins at 11:55

Eric Schmidt: The curious thing about Net Neutrality is that if there's any site that could afford [to pay higher telco fees for preferred service] it would be Google. And furthermore, if we did it, it would freeze out some of the new competitors. So it's in our economic interest to encourage this. But we believe that it is a violation of a fundamental assumption of the Internet, that every piece of the Internet is reachable. Its called the end-to-end principle. And we believe that Net Neutrality, if it is given up, that new competitors, new entrants, new ideas, become much more difficult. So far we have been able to hold back the forces. It looks like we'll have a good year.

Technorati Tags: Google, NetworkNeutrality, savetheinternet

Now there are three videos -- Governor Douglas, Yochai Benkler (excerpts only) and a lobby interview with Bruce Sterling on the F2C Website.

Technorati Tags: BruceSterling, F2C, F2C2007

Yet another infuriatingly misdirecting article about Wikipedia has appeared, this time in The Guardian, about Wikipedia contributor Essjay, named Ryan Jordan in real life, who misrepresented his academic credentials. This is really bad. Jordan, meet Bob Cringely.

But then the article goes on to tar all the thousands of good Wikipedians -- and Wikia management, and (by direct implication) Jimbo Wales, AND all peer production! -- with the Essjay brush.

Sure, anytime you have thousands of loosely vetted volunteers working on a project, the chances of coming up with one or two bad actors is high. But the Guardian takes the low road, smearing the efforts of the thousands who apply their expertise for the love of their craft, calling them "wrapped up in delusion," subject to "old fashioned cult appeal," dupes that "work for free" with "a dream that their donated effort will give them the prestige of an academic."

As if there's no motive but money paid for work done, and no elevation of reputation not mediated by The Academy!

Shame, Guardian. Shame.

[UPDATE: My, my, there are some vehement anti-Wikipedians out there! So many negative comments! I had no idea. Wonder what's the underlying beef?]

Technorati Tags: Press, SocialProduction, Wikipedia

I've just added the latest from Brough Turner, Steve Smith, Tom Evslin, John Quarterman, Jonny Goldstein, Aldon Hynes, Steve Stroh, Jon Husband and Peter Freyne to the F2C: Freedom to Connect home page.

Also added: Articles from National Journal and Communications Daily.

Also added: the first video posting, a two minute clip of Yochai Benkler's theme-setting keynote.

Technorati Tags: F2C, F2C2007

I've started to post a more or less systematic archive of news, blog posts, pictures, videos, chat logs, etc., from F2C at http://freedom-to-connect.net#aftermath. David Weinberger's and Susan Crawford's blog posts are up (and between them, they hit most of my high points), as is the National Journal's article, Adelstein Blasts White House Over Access To Broadband, based on the non-musical part of Commissioner Adelstein's F2C presentation.

More soon.

Technorati Tags: blogging, F2C, F2C2007, FCC

F2C; Freedom to Connect 2007 was a big success, if I say so myself. I'm hoping to do it again next year.

Over the next several days, I'll be posting and pointing to other people's summaries, videos, notes pictures and speeches.

For starters, here are my own F2C Opening Remarks. After one total bumble (2005) and one that tried to cut a middle path but dribbled into oblivion, by comparison my 2007 remarks have structure and substance. Here they are:

• Friends,
• colleagues,
• participants,
• students
• Citizens of the Internet,
• Scientists, Poets, Technologists, Artists, Learners and Lovers,
• builders of the critical public infrastructure,
• my heroes who made the Internet the miraculous place it is today,
• creators of the winner apps we value and love and use every day,
• advocates for the public good,
• FCC and Congressional staffers who work against the odds to ensure that the public voice is heard when policy is made,
• workers at telephone companies and cable companies who struggle to teach your company to change,
• misguided fossils who buy the telco lingo of scarcity and privatization,
• daydream believers in the magic hand of the market when there is no market and what you're seeing is not magic but sleight of hand and misdirection, and
• paid shills who are here simply to find out what to oppose tomorrow,
To all of you, I say,
Welcome to Freedom to Connect!

The future of the Internet is uncertain.

In one plausible future, we get the Internet that the telcos say they'll build for us.

In another future, we get the Internet we're afraid that the telcos will build, an Internet controlled by those who thrive on scarcity and opaqueness.

In a third future, we ourselves create the Internet we want. This is the Internet Tim Bray described when he declared "Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way!"

Our Internet is more than a series of tubes. It is not a truck. It is not a basket of apples.

It is a place, a place to meet each other, to make friends, to buy stuff, to express ourselves, to do deals, to exchange ideas and information, to contend, to work together, and to create new, valuable stuff for ourselves and each other. It is a place for citizenship, democracy, and freedom. It is our country, our homeland, our planet. It is worth fighting for.

Being digital and being fast is not enough. To "Fat Pipe" and "Always On," we must add, "Get out of the Way." The Internet we love owes everything to the end-to-end principle, also known as The Stupid Network. The Internet became the miraculous venue it is today because it is Stupid, while we at the edges are smart.

The locus of control, the decisions about what we hear, see and do, and what we say, show, program and create -- when the Internet is Stupid, these decisions are in our hands. Not everybody likes it that way. And every time the locus of control shifts away from individual human actors -- and the devices, applications and materials we choose and control and create -- the Internet we love is diminished. That's why, in addition to, "Fat Pipe," and "Always On," we need, "Get out of the way."

WhatEVER the future brings, we can be sure that:
(1) Technology will continue to advance.
(2) The fundamental human needs to create and communicate will persist, and,
(3) the rich and powerful will do whatever they can to preserve their money and power.

If they control what's on the net and who puts it there, and the quality of its delivery, it does not matter how fat or how always-on the pipe is. We need "Get out of the way."

We come to Freedom to Connect today to understand the Internet we want, to imagine how we'd like it to grow, and to figure out what we can do together to keep the locus of control firmly in our own hands.

We should not be dissuaded by remarks like Chairman Powell's here last year, that the telcos are so good at the policy game, that if we play we will lose. We're smarter than that. Last year we stopped a million dollar a week lobbying effort, and two bad industry bills in congress. In the states, we've stopped the tide of anti-muni-network bills. This year, we're starting to introduce pro-muni bills. Lafayette Louisiana just battled BellSouth and Cox Cable up to the State Suprene Court, and WON. And we're just starting to learn this game.

You are an amazing audience. No, that's nor right -- We are amazing participants.

And we have an amazing program. But before we launch into our program, I'd like to introduce a few special people who are not on the program.
Gary Arlen
Gary Bachula
Robert Cannon
Bob Frankston
Mike Godwin
Bruce Kushnick
Philip Neches
Brough Turner
Jerry Michalski and
Girsea Martinez, who is sixteen, who wrote to me to say, "I use the Internet every day and I'd like to understand it better." I googled her and found her in a Physics Summer Camp and in a Law Magnet High School. Sara Wedeman and her own sixteen year old daughter Alex are hosting Girsea at Freedom to Connect.

Thanks to F2C's sponsors:
Tropos
Level 3
Google
The Sunlight Foundation
Yugma
The Center for Digital Democracy
The Future of Music Coalition
OneWebDay
Atlantech Online
37 Signals, makers of Campfirenow
Emerson's Tutorial Bar Review
Now it is my pleasure to introduce Tom Evslin. Tom became part of AT&T's Senior Management Team when I was at Bell Labs. He built AT&T WorldNet, AT&T's consumer Internet venture. When my essay, "The Rise of the Stupid Network" came out, Tom was my advocate in Carpet Land. He told the Wall Street Journal that the Stupid Network was "like a glass of cold water in the face of AT&T's Management Hierarchy." Unfortunately, the senior management team was too drugged out for a glass of water to revive them, and they went sleep walking into the heavy traffic of the future. We've seen the result.
Tom went on to found ITXC, the Internet Telephony Exchange Company, which brokered minutes in 100 countries or so. And now Tom is blogging, doing charitable technology development around the world with his wife Mary, and the author of Hackoff.com, a novel, or a fictional blog. Tom calls it a BLOOK. And Tom is a citizen of Vermont, where he is helping the Governor turn Vermont into the first e-State in the Union.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Tom Evslin!

Technorati Tags: F2C, F2C2007, NetworkNeutrality, ScenarioPlanning

My hometown newspaper, the Falmouth Enterprise, is one of the last independent community news institutions. Usually it covers town meetings, local zoning issues, births, deaths, the weather and, most importantly, fishing. When I was a kid, I delivered the Enterprise. I've had my photos and letters published in it. It recorded my marriage and the deaths of my father and mother. It is a window on the community that's more than a little bit personal.

There's a standing joke around town about how badly the Enterprise screws up facts, but I've checked with other Woods Hole people who deal with larger media, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the consensus is the big guys screw it up at least as often as the Enterprise. [Check my recent experience with the Chicago Tribune.]

Occasionally the Enterprise has an article of greater than local import. (Here's one example.) Now the Enterprise has published an article of huge potential significance! It gains further credence from its consistency with a recent conversation I had with a well-placed aircraft industry insider, and from the integrity of the world-renowned Woods Hole scientific community.

The article below was published on Page 3 of The Falmouth Enterprise, February 23, 2007, and is reprinted with the newspaper's permission:

Woods Hole Resident Hopes To Expose Government Cover-Up of Flight 800

By MARK A. BROWN
More than a decade after TWA Flight 800 exploded south of Long Island, New York, a Woods Hole man believes his persistence is finally yielding some evidence that the US government may have covered up the true cause of the tragedy.
Thomas F. Stalcup of High Street, Woods Hole, runs Upward Innovations Inc., which makes wireless data transceivers for weather stations. In April 1999, he founded Flight 800 Independent Research Organization and remains its chairman.
Dr. Stalcup, who holds a doctorate in physics, said federal agencies and departments are finally responding to legal pressure and releasing information about the plane’s breakup. The Boeing 747 jet, heading east shortly after takeoff from New York City en route to Paris, disintegrated about eight miles offshore on July 17, 1996.
In its final report, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the nighttime explosion on an electrical spark from a frayed pump wire inside a fuel tank. Dr. Stalcup and others maintain that a missile fired during a US military exercise struck the plane. He cites more than 60 eyewitness accounts, which he has carefully scoured, that describe a bright, flare-like object flying upward from the water and changing direction toward the jet.
He filed suit in US District Court last July against the NTSB seeking the release of the records, including debris field maps, salvage logs, divers’ logs, and radar and sonar data.
Late last year, some of those records began arriving, including a CD of radar data from the NTSB. Earlier this month he received phone calls from the US Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration to arrange supply of further data.
The radar data, Dr. Stalcup said, shows an object approaching from the north and colliding with the left side of the plane as it flew east. That same data show debris exiting the right side of the plane, he said.
That agrees with a US Navy salvage report that aircraft debris was found on the sea floor south of the flight path, he said. “The hair stood up on the back of my neck when I saw wreckage had been recovered in that area,” Dr. Stalcup said. Based on the radar readings, he said, “the Navy recovered it exactly where it should have been.”
Dr. Stalcup said the NTSB originally maintained that the closest naval vessel was 180 miles away at the time of the explosion, yet he now has data he said that proves US Navy submarines were conducting exercises 40 miles from where the fuselage hit the water. A P-3 Orion submarine hunter aircraft was three miles away, he said.
Dr. Stalcup is not the first to dispute the events that led to the tragedy.
Investigative journalist James Sanders, in his 1997 book, The Downing of TWA Flight 800, made a case for a Navy missile hitting the plane. On its website, the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals presents evidence suggesting a shoulder-fired missile could have brought down the TWA Flight 800.
However Dr. Stalcup doubts that was the case. “The plane was too high,” he said, deflecting the possibility of a rogue terrorist attack. The jet’s last recorded altitude was about 13,200 feet above the water, according to an NTSB report.
Dr. Stalcup is hoping renewed media attention to the incident will reveal the truth to the public. The Discovery Channel interviewed him for Best Evidence, a documentary that aired in January, which he lauded for exposing the radar and debris field evidence.
Cable News Network also recently aired a documentary on the crash, “No Survivors,” but Dr. Stalcup took its producers to task for not pressing government agencies and officials or verifying the information they provided. “It’s a classic example of the media not doing its job,” he said. “If CNN isn’t holding their feet to the fire, the government will do whatever they want.”
What began as a curiosity for Dr. Stalcup became an obsession after his efforts to obtain information from government agencies and departments were met with resistance. Twice he requested data and records related to the crash and recovery of debris under the Freedom of Information Act, but the National Transportation Safety Board declined them. Two subsequent appeals were ignored, he said.
“I was just an interested citizen” at the time of the tragedy, which occurred while he was a graduate student working toward his doctorate at Florida State University. “What the government was telling the public didn’t make sense.”
Now that information is coming forth, Dr. Stalcup said, “I want to keep the momentum going.”

Technorati Tags: FalmouthEnterprise, Politics, Press, WoodsHole

"It's the Net vs. the 20th-century fossil order in a fight that the cybergreens are winning. Why? Because they're not about spiritual potential, human decency, small is beautiful, peace, justice or anything else unattainable. The cybergreens are about stuff people want, such as health, sex, glamour, hot products, awesome bandwidth, tech innovation and tons of money."

Bruce Sterling in My Dot-Green Future Is Finally Arriving in today's Washington Post. Bruce will be the closing keynote speaker at F2C: Freedom to Connect, tomorrow and Tuesday in Washington DC.

Technorati Tags: BruceSterling, ClimateChange, F2C, F2C2007, GlobalWarming, QuoteOfNote

I've been an advisor to CallWave since 1999, and I've been enthusiastically using CallWave's fax-to-email service, which works with any email.

But I never needed CallWave's never-miss-a-call service for dial-up Internet users. I was on broadband, not dial-up.

And when CallWave started offering call management apps for broadband users, they developed for Windows, with 95% of the addressable market. But I had already switched to Macintosh. (I switched in August of 2004; I'll never forget it!)

Now, finally, CallWave is offering something for the Think Different set. CallWave's Voicemail widget displays a list of your mobile phone voice messages on your Mac, and plays them too. It runs in the OSX dashboard. It is stone simple to install, like any widget. It just f---ing works. And it is free, as in, "free beer."

There are a few differences between cellco voicemail and CallWave. Your caller hears a brief CallWave "leave a message" greeting instead of your own. And you are notified of new voicemail via SMS, rather than the usual alert; the alert contains the calling number, caller ID information, message length, etc.

It looks useful to me. I'm delighted to finally be a customer for a CallWave call management app! And I think Mac-heads and CallWave is a good match.

Disclosure: As a CallWave advisor, I own stock. (So try CallWave and help my stock go up, up, up!) And they pay me once in a while too. However, nobody asked me or told me to write this. I didn't even know The Widget was coming. I found it on the CallWave Web site, just like you can. CallWave did not see this before I posted it. The words above are all mine.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Cellco, Mac, CallWave