Yes, this is my second question mark-festooned post of the day, but it’s another title that calls for being phrased as a question, because it’s so unbelievable that anyone said it.
Turns out, a McCain adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, was struggling to prove that McCain has what it takes to tackle our economic woes. And here I thought it was the communists, not American war heroes, who believe in managing the economy. Anyway, Holtz-Eakin reached for anything to prove McCain’s credentials and pointed to the Senator’s service on the Commerce Committee.
Pressed to provide an example of what McCain had accomplished on that committee, Holtz-Eakin said the senator did not have jurisdiction over financial markets, then he held up his Blackberry, telling reporters: “He did this.”
That’s right everyone, Al Gore may have created the Internet, but John McCain created the Blackberry.
The Washington Post reports today on a trend that I thought we all knew about, but one I’m glad the mainstream media is finally realizing. It turns out that people who play video games are not just virginal teenage boys with acne problems. No, even 20-something, attractive women play video games.
The Post’s Mike Musgrove reports on the mother and daughters of the Burguieres family of Bethesda, Maryland. Of course in good journalist fashion Musgrove uses the Burguiereses to illustrate a larger point, he even points to the relevant stats:
It used to be that this all-woman crew wouldn’t fit the standard image of the video game consumer. But the perception of gamers as being mostly young guys isn’t so true anymore. Women and girls make up 40 percent of the gamer population, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
The most interesting point brought up in the article on this demographic trend—one that most gamers realize has been happening for quite some time—is Musgrove’s observation that women once were not naturally accepted members of the gaming community. It’s a great point, but one that can be extended to tech community in general.
A major breathalyzer vendor is facing increasing pressure to make the source code of its product available for inspection by defendants. I’m pleased to see my home state of Minnesota leading the charge. The Constitution gives you the right to confront your accuser, and if your accuser is 50,000 lines of assembly code, then you have a right to examine that code. And if CMI doesn’t want to release the source code for its products, then it shouldn’t have gone into a business in which its product is the key witness against defendants in criminal cases.
CMI’s argument that releasing the source code would put it at a disadvantage is nonsense. Making the source code available for inspection would not entail licensing the copyright of the code to anyone who wants it. So it’s true that a competitor might somehow get a copy of the source code, but it wouldn’t be able to do anything with it without facing a copyright lawsuit. And just looking at the assembly language isn’t going to be very helpful. Assembly language is notoriously difficult to interpret, and the small amount of insight a competitor might glean from seeing the source code would be outweighed by the risk of a successful copyright or trade secret lawsuit down the road.
Incidentally, all of these points apply with equal force to touchscreen voting machines. Those should be available for public inspection too, although unfortunately there’s probably not an explicit constitutional provision allowing you to confront your election judge.
It exalts terrorists and terrorism to try chasing their videos off the Internet, and it doesn’t work. Senator Lieberman’s quest to cleanse the Internet of terrorism has won a battle in a losing war by convincing Google to take down such videos. They can still be found on LiveLeak and can be hosted on any of millions of servers worldwide.
[In his eager anti-Google gafliery (“gadfliery” – the nominative case of the verb “to gadfly,” which I just invented), I’m sorry to say that TLF friend Scott Cleland has gotten it wrong.]
The better approach is to treat terrorists as the losers that they are. Their videos do not scare us, but provide us opportunities to observe, comment, and deplore them, perhaps even mocking their foolishness. In this video, at minute 2:18, terrorists appear to be training for the circus. We’ll really fear them when they can fend off lions with a chair.
A friend pointed me to this event, which looks pretty cool:
Who? Anyone who is interested in technology, mobility, art, social justice, sustainability, micro-finance – and all things Africa-esque
What? A good opportunity to share ideas, start conversations and build connections with people and organizations making a positive impact in Africa
When? Saturday, October 11th 9 am – 8 pm (end time to be confirmed)
Where? Google’s Mountain View Campus
We don’t talk about international development issues much on TLF, but technology certainly plays a key role in helping developing countries develop. If you’re in the Bay Area, you might want to check it out.
The San Diego Union Tribune has an outstanding summary of the recently-unveiled SpaceShipTwo (SS2) (Wikipedia), successor to SpaceShipOne, which became the first private vehicle to reach space in 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X-Prize. SS2 is vying to become the world’s first commercially operational spaceplane and the first in Virgin Galactic’s fleet. Pictured at left is Virgin founder and multi-billionaire Richard Branson, and to his right, Burt Rutan, designer of SS1 and SS2. The PDF does an excellent job of illustrating the basics of an SS2 flight, though at nearly 9mb, the file isn’t a quick download.
At a press conference this morning at the National Press club in Washington, the Space Solar Alliance for Future Energy (SSAFE) announced a milestone demonstration of the critical technology enabling SBSP: long-distance, solar-powered wireless power transmission. The demonstration project, led by NASA veteran John C. Mankins, demonstrated microwave power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space. Although SBSP satellites would ultimately operate at much higher altitudes in the geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km AMSL), Mankins has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of long-distance energy transmission in principle.
Those of you who haven’t “cut the cord” to television (as I did about 5-6 years ago) may be interested to watch a special episode of Discovery Project Earth entitled “Orbital Powerplant) that will debut tonight at 10 pm with reruns on September 13 at 2am and noon.
This video provides more background on SBSP (until recently known as “Space Solar Power”):
The introduction below was originally written by Berin Szoka, but now that I (Adam Marcus) am a full-fledged TLF member, I have taken authorship.
Adam Marcus, our exceptionally tech-savvy new research assistant at PFF, has published his first piece at the PFF blog, which I reprint here for your edification.
Today Google’s DC office hosted an interesting panel on cloud computing. What was missing was a good definition of what “cloud computing” actually is.
While Wikipedia has its own broad definition of cloud computing, many think of cloud computing more narrowly as strictly web-based for which clients need nothing but a web browser. But that definition doesn’t cover things like Skype and SETI@home. And just because PFF has implemented Outlook Web Access so we can access the Exchange server via the Web, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve implemented what most people might think of as “cloud computing.” Yet these are all variations on a common theme, which leads me to propose my own basic definition: any client/server system that operates over the Internet.
To understand the potential policy and legal issues raised by cloud computing so-defined, one must break down the discussion into a 4-part grid. One axis is divided into private data (e.g., email) and public data (e.g., photo sharing). The other axis is divided into data hosted on a single server or centralized server farm and data hosted on multiple computers in a dynamic peer-to-peer network (e.g., BitTorrent file sharing).
I posted an essay last month about some possible non-regulatory solutions to the problem of porn on planes that I predicted might develop once airlines started rolling out in-flight Internet access. Some respondants to that essay argued this was likely a non-problem because few people would actually view porn in public. Unfortunately, a few incidents have apparently already created controversy.
Frankly, I am shocked that legislation hasn’t already been floated on this issue, but I am sure that someone in Congress will be firing off something soon. Again, like I said in that previous essay, before things get ugly and bills start flying up on the Hill, the airlines need to think about crafting some constructive solutions to this problem. We don’t want the FCC to become the censors of the sky, as some lawmakers will no doubt propose eventually.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
Yes, this is my second question mark-festooned post of the day, but it’s another title that calls for being phrased as a question, because it’s so unbelievable that anyone said it.
The Washington Post reports today
The San Diego Union Tribune has an 
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.