Posts from — April 2008

The BBC’s tech reporter writes that BBC and ISPs clash over iPlayer

A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC.

ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.

Ashley Highfield, head of future media and technology at the corporation, has said he believes the cost of network upgrades should be carried by ISPs.

Simon Gunter, from ISP Tiscali, said the BBC should contribute to the cost.

He said the BBC did not understand the issues involved.

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Sue Sturgis at Facing South writes about Project Vulcan, a Federal program to map CO₂ emissions in the US.

If you click on the map you will get a larger version from Purdue University, home of the project, so you can see how your area is doing. While I expected that the cities would stand out, one of the things that struck me is that the Interstates also stand out from the surrounding landscape. This is a powerful argument for decreasing automobile emissions, as the map clearly shows their effect.

You know some states have “Take your child to work day”, well thanks to the Florida legislature we now have “Take Your Gun To Work Everyday”.

I loved this bit from Dr. Peaden:

Backers say the measure upholds the vision of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, who made the right to bear arms part of the Bill of Rights.

“The second thing they wrote about in that constitution was the right to bear arms,” said Sen. Durell Peaden, a Republican from Crestview, Florida. “It was what was dear in their hearts.”

The man has a JD in addition to his MD, but apparently doesn’t know the difference between the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, or that it isn’t “that constitution”; it’s “the Constitution” that he took oath to support when he entered public office .

He’s in his last term, but he is a true embarrassment to my county, although he doesn’t represent me. Even a guy who got his medical degree from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara¹, Mexico, should be more attuned to health and safety issues than Durell, [or “Unreal” as some of us call him].

1. Note that the web site for the “School of Medicine” is in English, while the rest of the UAG site is in Spanish, and they have a “Medical Spanish” course. This school was set up for gringos who couldn’t get into a US medical school.

Back in the day the cynical guys in the blue uniforms used to say: ” It isn’t a system; there is no justice; but it’s certainly criminal.” Is that ever true today on the Federal level.

Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat pointed out a Larisa Alexandrovna article at the Huffingtonpost, It’s official, Alabama is the Soviet Union… which covered the delivery of subpoenas to a group of Alabama legislators, mostly Democratic, while they were in session at the state capitol. It’s a corruption probe of the state’s community college system. A news flash for the Feds: everybody in the state knows the system operates based on corruption and cronyism, and has for years, so why the current interest? It hasn’t gotten noticeably worse, and you can still get an education, so why look at it now?

She also mentions some of the antics of the Feds in Mississippi, which look a lot like selective prosecution.

We may as well include Don Siegelman in the Alabama coverage, and Ben Kuehne in Miami.

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So, while Waiting for Victory is in its DC tryouts, the real world continues on its rather predictable way.

Dr. Cole delivers a smack down to an ignorant twit [my view] as well as his daily round-up of death, destruction, and reality in the “Cradle of Civilization”.

In a move that surprises no one who actually reads about Iraq on a semi-regular basis, CNN reports that Religious leaders tell al-Sadr to keep militia intact, which isn’t strictly true. What the old guys in Najaf said was they didn’t get to be old guys by involving themselves in Shi’ia internal conflicts, and they had no intention of being caught between al Malaki and al Sadr, which is precisely why al Sadr left the decision up to them: he knew they would refuse to decide, and he could seize the religious high ground.

Apparently during a break in classes Moqtada said a few other things that CNN picked up on: Shiite cleric threatens to end militia’s cease-fire, cancels protest

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This goes on all the time, but no one bothers to report it in the mainstream press.

There was a fire in a Baptist church and the Democratic Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, decided to give the church taxpayers’ money to rebuild. Since he couldn’t do that directly, he found a way to do it through a grant to a school that rents space in the church. The legislature was unhappy: Illinois House panel criticizes deputy governor in hearing on $1 million grant to school.

A local activist atheist, Rob Sherman, was also unhappy and went before a legislative meeting to complain about the subterfuge, where one legislator objected to his presence and told him to leave, as chronicled by Chicago Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn: Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: `It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!’

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So after a little fact checking Jake Tapper discovers that Hillary Clinton’s hospital story is basically true but she tells it badly. She fails to make it clear that there were multiple hospitals involved, and the hospital that did all the screaming to the New York Times wasn’t the hospital that denied the pregnant woman medical attention because she was poor.

The hospital that did all the kvetching had to violate patient privacy to make the complaint about Mrs. Clinton, but that’s OK because they were bad mouthing Hillary.

Too bad the New York Times has never heard of fact checking.

In case anyone has missed it – I don’t like Clinton or Obama. I like the mainstream media reporting even less. The Soviet media didn’t pretend to be fair and balanced.

As we cringe at the thought of the VSP reviewing the the latest performance by Petraeus and Crocker in the Hedgemony’s Washington production of Waiting for Victory perhaps we should review the scenic design of the stage.

Dr. Cole provides information on the current scene and what he thinks it might mean.

Sudarsan Raghavan in the Washington Post covers the background of the plot to this point in his piece, Rift widens between Iraq’s Shiites.

This is expanded on by Reuters in their piece, Iraq’s Sadr to disband Mehdi Army if clerics order

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There is nothing but bad news from Iraq in this CNN article – Iraqi PM issues al-Sadr ultimatum amid Baghdad violence

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Three U.S. soldiers were killed and 31 others wounded in two rocket attacks Sunday afternoon in Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

An attack involving a “couple of rounds” of fire on the International Zone, also known as the Green Zone, killed two soldiers and wounded 17 others about 3:30 p.m., a military official said, declining to give the specific location of the attack for security reasons.

A separate attack about 30 minutes earlier killed one soldier and wounded 14 at a U.S. military outpost in Rustamiya in southeastern Baghdad, the military said.

Sunday’s fatalities bring the death toll of U.S. troops in the Iraq war to 4,022. Nearly 30,000 others have been wounded in action.
…

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My outrage is the with the methods used by the Federal government in my post, This Is Outrageous. These types of problems have occurred in other areas, but the systems weren’t shut down. Money was placed in escrow until the problems could be resolved, so that the users of the systems weren’t cut off while the problems were addressed.

There is a problem with this contract and it’s obvious:

The OnSat pricing according to the company’s own web site:

$149/month 1Mbps/128Kbps
$1,100/year maintenance fee
$150 initialization fee
$3,595 equipment purchase
$530 installation of equipment

I checked to see what HughesNet and Wildblue charge for the same level of service in Albuquerque and it was significantly lower:

$70/month 1Mbps/200Kbps
$249 equipment

Both companies are currently offering free installation and neither has a “maintenance fee”.

Now, you need a high quality wireless router to create the “hot spots” around the chapter houses, so the equipment cost will probably double, but this is the one-off retail price, not a group purchase of hundreds of installations.

This is a shame, and I can’t believe that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t catch these problems and discrepancies, but that’s no reason to punish the users.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

So Texas law enforcement and and child welfare have raided the rural compound of a splinter religious group based on reports of child abuse.

This sounds awfully familiar.

We can certainly hope that this ends more peacefully, but given the reality of those in charge of what we laughingly call the “American Criminal Justice System”, the real question becomes: is Jerry Boykin involved in anyway?

I was thinking about the Dineh situation, having become interested in them through the mystery novels of Tony Hillerman, which made the connections to the Athabascan people I knew from Alaska, and then back to their mutual roots in the Yenesai region of Siberia from my Russian studies. They are all semi-nomadic in that they have permanent winter dwellings, but follow food sources at other times.

It seemed to be that there had to be a way to establish communications within the nation without causing harm, or building more than a minimum of artificial structures, and there are, but they are being built in “third world” areas because “everyone knows there are no huge expanses of wilderness in the United States.”

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The Associated Press is reporting that the Navajo Nation likely to lose Internet service

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) — The thousands of Navajo Nation residents who rely on the Internet to work, study and communicate across their 27,000-square-mile reservation will be out of luck Monday, if their service provider shuts access as planned.

“It’s going to be a sad day,” said Ernest Franklin, director of the tribe’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.

A tribal audit last year revealed that Utah-based provider OnSat Network Communications Inc. may have double-billed the tribe, and it raised questions about how the tribe requested bids for the Internet contract.

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