Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

Datamunchers

by David Holtzman

More ISPs and tech companys were subpoenaed by the government in their COPA (Child Online Protection Act) fishing expedition than was previously thought. Information Week used the Freedom of Information Act to look at additional documents from the Justice Department related to the Google fishing episode last month. If you remember, the DOJ had gone after Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google. Google had declined to share historical search records (on the basis of trade secrets) although apparently the other companies had rolled over. Justice had been looking for evidence to strengthen their claims that COPA should be upheld.

Two weeks ago, in a California court, Google was backed up, mostly. They had to turn over a limited set of websites, no search terms.

The answer to the FOIA request is disturbing. The DOJ went after 34 companies including some of the biggest like AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Earthlink and Verizon. They also went after tech companies that make and enforce content filtering software.

I'm bothered by this for several reasons. Primarily, as a taxpayer, I'm offended that they spent public money trying to prop up a program that the majority of Americans don't want and that was struck down by the courts anyway. Like prayer in school, COPA-like executive fiats is an unwanted extension of a bureaucrat's personal view of morality into my life.

So now we know that the government is perfectly capable of going after big service company's customer records for any old excuse, not just for "national security" reasons.

So what else have they gone after? Have they requested hidden details of encryption from companies like Microsoft? Do they secretly look at Google logs? How about caching--if I were them, I'd go after Akamai--there's a goldmine in looking at dumpster-diving through network caches.

The solution is twofold: push back the government through judicial and legislative means and educate companies about the need for data purging.

The bottom line is that the more data that these companies keep, the more that lawyers (public and private) are going to go after them.

Posted on March 31, 2006

Of Mice and ?

by David Holtzman

It's time for an alternate way to interact with a computer. The mouse was invented in 1963 by Doug Englebart and ironically enough, was originally known as the bug. Mice came into their own with the advent of Windowing systems, first the Mac, then MS Windows. Mice have been built with many options. There're wireless mice, optical mice, 1,2,3 or more button flavors.The mouse was ideally suited for moving windows around on the screen and seemed to fulfill the basic functions necessary for an input device: pointing and selecting objects.

The mouse is squeaking its age. Computer games only use mice when they have to, because the rodents are not a great tool when you're trying to do something quickly. It's not so great for sophisticated word processing, although it's usable. The biggest problem is that it's totally wrong for web browsing.

What we need would be a tool that:
- Allowed click-selection without taking your hands off the keyboard
- Had its own storage metaphor, like an unlimited paste buffer
- Was customized to the individual and probably taken away from computer to computer

I'm not sure what the answer is. If I had to guess, I'd say wearable technology like rings or bracelets, but it's too early to say. What I am sure of, is that this is big, big money waiting to be found.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Imagine what they'd do if you built a better mouse.

Posted on March 30, 2006

Crabby apples

by David Holtzman

Today in London, Apple computer defends its trademark against Apple Corps, Ltd, a British music company. Apple Corps, Ltd is owned by the remaining Beatles, George Harrison's estate and Yoko Ono. Apple music contends that Apple computer has violated the terms of a 1991 agreement in which Apple Computer agreed to limit its music business. Apple has sold 14 million iPods already and the iTunes music store is more popular than the Dummy book series in the Bush White House.

The heart of this disagreement is the business overlap of music. Trademark law allows multiple uses of the same name as long as there's no confusion. Computers and music didn't appear to intersect 30 years ago--they do now.

Technology is the culprit. It's a lot harder for a company to specialize narrowly enough today to guarantee that they'll never overlap into someone else's business area. If that someone else uses the same name, you have a far distant collision in the not-so-soon future.

The other problem is that the Internet gives everybody the same backyard. It's too easy to view every sizable company as global, reducing the effectiveness of the argument that there would be no market confusion because they don't overlap.

The solution in the digital age is to pick a name that's made up, preferably with an umlaut or something. That's why you have Accenture and Fruszen Gladje, Compaqs and Frisbees. Any IP lawyer will tell you that that's the best naming solution. Of course, you can also use the poor man's Intellectual Property lawyer, the Domain Name System. If the name is free, than it's almost certainly trademarkable.

Posted on March 29, 2006

Bent over blogs

by David Holtzman

The FEC yesterday exempted almost all political activity on the Internet from regulation except paid ads. This decision makes blogs a significant political force in the 2008 general election.

It's cute that the FEC thought that they could regulate it anyway. They can certainly do what they want to candidates or even politicians in general, but what about pseudonyms in pseudoplaces out there in the Metaverse? Where are the servers? What's their real identity? What's the jurisdiction? As we found out with domain names, it's difficult to take legal action when you don't know the place or the person.

Given yesterday's ruling, bloggers are positioned to become the new voice of politics. They should be a very loud voice in the 2008 primaries, where grassroot efforts become especially critical. It's even more significant because the conventional media has taken to reporting blogs as news. I guess that they've exhausted the permutations of interviewing each other. This factor is the "blogger megaphone."

What's ironic, is that this means that geeks can influence politics. Why do I say this? Because all bloggers are geeks. They might be computer weenies or media groupies or political junkies, but they're still geeks. They learned to be literate while their classmates were giving wedgies and lighting their own emissions. It's great that geeks will have political influence. Their time has come. Just as long as it's not nerds. Nerrrds!

Posted on March 28, 2006

Flush with defeat

by David Holtzman

The Bush administration has made an odd request of Fairfax County, a well-heeled DC suburb--They want samples of its sewage. (I'll sidestep the easy jokes for just a second). Here's why...they want to test for presence of cocaine in the diluted urine in the wastewater. Seriously.

Now this would be for statistical reasons, of course. They couldn't possibly narrow down the specific place that the druggy water was coming from, but it is an odd thing to do.

It seems as if the Bushies want to prove something to the rest of the country. They force Internet companies to give them samples of queries to prove that people type dirty words in to search engines and now they want to sample human waste product to prove that some of them use cocaine.

I thought that I would help them make their case that America has vices. so I have some humble suggestions for them to consider:

- Check dictionaries in public libraries for wear and tear on pages with definitions of dirty words.
- Monitor the consumption of late-night jerky-and-twinky runs at convenience stores (must be druggies, right?)
- Randomly sample ipods at airports for buccaneered music
- Subpoena KFC to find out the ratio of "breasts" sold to legs or ribs
- Cross-reference charitable donations to churches from tax forms and by elimation, spot the atheists

Secret vices are unAmerican. We wave our problems proudly in the desert wind for all to see.

Posted on March 27, 2006

Thoughts on the election of 2008

by David Holtzman

It's hard to believe, but we're moving into a Presidential election cycle. Even though we're 2+ years away, the circling has begun and for the first time in many, many years, both parties are open.

The next president will take office and will be handed more half-ass problems than any other one that I can remember. Unless things change pretty dramatically before November 2008, he/she can expect to be forced to deal with:

- A worsening economy with measurable inflation and interest rates north of 7.5%
- An unextractable presence in Iraq. If we leave, it collapses and the resulting crater will suck in much of the Mid-East
- The likelihood of reinstituting the draft. The Reserves and National Guard have been overextended. Active Duty retention is poor.
- The necessity of shepharding a military buildup. We're almost out of bullets and bombs, armor and artillery. The stealth bomber is being retired this year with no replacement in site.
- A deeply cynical, divided populace. George Bush is the worst President in modern times. He will be remembered as the Great Divider. Rather than pulling us together after 9/11, he opportunistically took advantage of our fear and scared us into going along with every preset agenda item that he had. This raises the bar on the next president, who will have to be an uncommonly straight shooter or we will tune him out.
- A growing Hispanic population that is threatening to overwhelm our monolingual government service capabilities as well as trigger off waves of violent, immigration-phobic vigilanteism. I live in Herndon, Virginia, an affluent Washington, D.C. suburbs and this is our number one issue right now.

The problems listed above are excellent subjects for Internet debate. Even if they get short shrift from risk-adverse campaigns, they can and will be debated by the electorate on blogs.

We, as Americans, have two years to think about this election and we must choose wisely. The way that we vote for our national leaders sometimes makes it difficult for us to express our concerns and desires by voting. Many of us live in states that are so late in the primary cycle that we're essentially given one candidate to consider by the time that it comes to us.

This is the advantage of the Internet. Cutting through the Gordian Knot that is the American political process and making our voices heard, regardless of the electoral college, the conventions and coverage by big media.

In the 2008 election, the Internet will be the kingmaker.

Posted on March 24, 2006

Blogging by bobos

by David Holtzman

I'm confused about blogging, specifically how newspapers and tv shows can blog. Web logging was always intended as an alternative media source, a way for non-journalists to share with others what they were experiencing. Clearly we were all interested, because that's what broadcast journalists covered anyway ("Mrs Smith, how did you feel when your sleeping son Timmy was eaten alive by rats?").

So why now, do big papers like the Washington Post and television news shows have blogs? I assume that from their perspective there is less editorial control than there is over a print article. But none? I doubt that.

Is a blog a news article that happens to be online and told in a casual manner?

Wikipedia defines blogs as

...A blog (or weblog) is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed with the newest at the top. Like other media, blogs often focus on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Some blogs function as online diaries.

That may be true, but there is a social expectation for a blog. A blog is the reality television of journalism. We expect it to be more revealing, more honest than a conventional news story and more importantly, there is an expectation, IMHO, for it to be amateur, not amateurish, which is a different thing entirely.

The big media players writing blogs are silly. It's an attempt to use a fashionable word and a slight change of editorial policy to do what they were doing all along, anyway.

It feels to me like it would if Frank Sinatra were alive today and I had to watch him singing duets with Eminem.

Blogs are alternative media.
Blogs are erosive, not institutionally accretive.
Blogs are subversive.

Posted on March 23, 2006

Metaculture

by David Holtzman

Tonight South Park returns for a new season. There's the usual furor over the plot--in this case the battle between Scientology and Parker and Stone continues in the plotline, welcoming back the popular character "Chef", voiced by Isaac Hayes. It's widely rumored that Parker and Stone edited Hayes voice from previous episodes as if he'd cooperated. Purportedly this is because Hayes, a Scientologist, announced that he was leaving the show because of religous intolerance; suspiciously right after last year's controversial Scientology episode with the boys begging Scientologist Tom Cruise to "come out of the closet."

What's kind of interesting about this kind of show is that people either get it or they don't. It's not just South Part, either. Family Guy and others fall into this category of hip show that divides the squares from the circles. Most parents, for instance, do not watch these shows.

Why? I think that it's because they're not just pop culture, they're meta popculture. You cannot understand Family Guy, for instance, without having a sense of the innumerable references that they're poking fun at. Watch a family watching one of these shows and you'll see the kid explaining what's going on every 30 seconds, "see Mom, R. Kelly had a video about a closet and lots of people think that Tom Cruise is gay..."

Metaculture is a much higher pinnacle of social awareness than pop culture. It moves faster, too. Thank technology. Now it's not only enough to know references to be cool, you have to be aware of what's going on in the entertainment world...who's quitting shows, who's sleeping with whom, who is publicly feuding. Then you'll understand rap music better, appreciate music video and sit down with your kids and enjoy animated obscenity. Lord knows that I do.

Posted on March 22, 2006

Puff the magic

by David Holtzman

I just got back from a week-long sailing vacation and noticed a change in airport security. There are these little puffing machines at some of the bigger airports. They work like this--you walk in to airlocklooking thing and you get puffed. Presumably the air dislodges particulate matter that can then be analyzed for the presence of explosives.

Very interesting stuff. I made an excuse and went around again just to see it work. So this got me thinking about the future of public place security. It must be going passive, which probably makes sense other than the obvious security implications.

What might that mean? I have some ideas:

How about mandatory RFID-coded luggage tags to track luggage?
What about giving id tokens on lanyards at check-in and making everyone in the airport wear one at all times. You take the lanyard back at the gate. Then you can track people.
Between puffing of people and luggage and locational technology, we really don't need to worry about peoples' surnames quite so much, anymore.

It's better security to have stateless, passive sensors, than predictive programs like CAPPS II.

In general, hardware is more trustworthy than software in these situations.

Posted on March 21, 2006

Guarding Google's Data Banks (Business Week article)

by David Holtzman

Business Week Online

MARCH 14, 2006

Viewpoint
By David H. Holtzman

Guarding Google's Data Banks
The more info the company accumulates, the more unwanted legal attention it will draw. What's more, its brand could suffer damage as well

Google's motto is "Don't be evil," but it might be better for the company if it were "Don't view evil." The search-engine giant's strategy to become the custodian of all electronic information may ultimately tarnish its financial future.

Storing information is very different from pointing to it. Google (GOOG) has already been involved in legal and government hassles over access to its search logs. The company's lawyers will square off with the Justice Dept. in a U.S. District Court hearing on Mar. 14 in San Jose. Calif., over the government's attempts to gain access to search requests and Web-site addresses. But all this is nothing compared to what's going to happen once Google becomes the one-stop database shop on the information superhighway.

The company's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible." And there's no doubt Google is data-ravenous. Unlike its predecessors in the search business, it didn't stop with tracking Internet sites. Through acquisition and product development, Google has expanded its search functions to include shopping information (Froogle), blogs, catalogs, 20 years of Internet Usenet chatter (Google Groups), academic papers (Google Scholar), and, ostensibly, all published hard copy (Google Books).

GOOGLE ALL OVER. If the target were just public material, the only entity under threat would be the Library of Congress. But Google needs private information, too.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt pointed to the company's ambitions earlier this month when he inadvertently confirmed the existence of GDrive, a remote storage service, apparently designed to host the master version of everyone's personal data. GDrive was revealed on slide notes accidentally attached to a PowerPoint presentation posted on the Google Web site.

The company has also expanded its technology onto the personal computer with Google Desktop, which enables users to search through personal files. Schmidt & Co. have even gotten into communications with Google SMS (short messaging) and Google Mobile, maps with Google Maps, detailed satellite reconnaissance of the planet with Google Earth, and, of course, e-mail with the company's popular Gmail service.

SNOOP MAGNET. The more Google wants to do, the more information it needs to store. And the more it has, the more valuable that data becomes -- and the more third parties will try to get their hands on Google's assets.

Another drawback to the spotlight: The more successful Google is, the more unwelcome legal attention it will draw. As data continues to flood into Google, the comprehensiveness of its databases makes it a juicier target for government fishing expeditions. Its refusal to comply with a Justice Dept. subpoena is getting a lot of media attention right now, but surely there are many situations where Google has complied with U.S. government requests. In fact, I imagine it has given in to most of them. Remember, Google's defense in the Justice Dept. case isn't based on consumer privacy, but rather on its right to protect trade secrets.

So I would imagine that Google is a favorite stopping point on the Patriot Act express. A federal agent investigating almost anything could easily justify dipping into Google's records, assuming the agent ever felt the need to justify anything.

HACKING TARGET. Sometimes, just the results of searches can be damning. In one recent case, Google search evidence was used to secure a criminal conviction. In November, 2005, Robert Petrick was convicted of murder in Durham, N.C., in part because of evidence that he used Google to search for the terms "neck snap break." Although the police got the evidence directly from his hard drive, the authorities could have gotten it straight from the company.

In addition to criminal activity, Google's records would be useful in many civil cases, such as divorce, employment suits, and shareholder actions. As time goes on, Google's records will be as useful to an investigation as that of any other utility -- if not more so.

Even in the unlikely event that the lawyers leave it alone, Google is rapidly becoming the crown jewel of the Internet for hackers. The sheer volume of information makes robbing it as difficult as stealing bullion from Fort Knox, but if enough money is at stake, an aspiring Goldfinger will find a way.

PERSONAL PITCH. I don't know what it costs Google to comply with each government request, but the real damage isn't financial -- it comes in the form of brand erosion. The "oo" at the heart of Google is you. The company doesn't produce a product -- it sells the opinions of the Internet community. Its search approach is based on the concept that for a given search term, the most-linked site is probably the most relevant. These pointers aren't put there by Google. They come from everyone.

Users don't need to understand how it works any more than they do a television set. They just need to believe that the answer is relevant, and miraculously, it usually is. And because people trusted the company, they were more than willing to use Gmail and Google Desktop.

So Google's business model is heavily dependent on trust. Without it, it will have trouble with more than just cranky privacy advocates. Look at Gmail. The revenue comes from targeted ads. The personalization is accomplished by software that reads and analyzes each e-mail and serves up a pitch tailored to its content. If consumers' suspicion of the company grows, it could tank the service.

NO FUN. Future Google offerings will undoubtedly incorporate personalization, which requires further trust -- trust that personal information is safe with Google, trust that searches are anonymous, trust that the company truly does no evil.

It's easy to see why Google is fighting the Justice Dept. subpoena. It might even win -- which would have wide ramifications well beyond the company itself. But regardless of how this case turns out, there will be others. The more Google collects and centralizes data, the more others will want it. The more compliant the company is with investigative requests, the more damage to its brand.

Google could ride through some revenue loss, but the end result could be something much worse: The culture the company espouses, and that employees love, could go away. Then it might experience one of the worst fates that can befall an innovative Silicon Valley company -- it will cease to have fun.

Posted on March 18, 2006

Should there be restrictions on ad locations?

by David Holtzman

Is there a limit on where advertising can be displayed? The other day I saw a truck with two LCD panels, one on each side going down a highway. It caught my peripheral vision and I stared as the ad changed...right until I almost ran into the back of the truck in front of me.

They're on cars. They're on subway train walls. They're inside video games. They're placed inside movies. They're in kids' schools They're in sports stadiums.

A guy recently went on Ebay and sold the right for a company to tatoo an ad on his neck.

I expect to see a lot more of the body thing. How about surgical stiches in the shape of the IBM logo?

It's time for a healthy discourse on the subject of ad placement. What about space? Now that we have commercial satellite launches; imagine the possibilities.

I'm not generally for regulation of things, but I'd be in favor of a rule outlying advertising on a human body. That's a good start.

Posted on March 17, 2006

Back door bizplan

by David Holtzman

I wonder which tech companies have cooperated with the government by putting hidden back doors into their software? For those not in the know, back doors are secret ways to get into software, usually by typing something odd at an unexpected place in the program's execution.

Clearly the major virus checker programs do this, or they might accidentally turn up government spyware like the FBI program that used to be called Magic Lantern.

Google almost certainly does, because it's the cheapest way for them to comply with routine government queries.

The rumors have abounded for years that Microsoft has always put secret places in WIndows, Access and maybe Office, although I've never seen a shred of proof that they have. In fact, a developer for VIsta flatly denied that the company did so.

So who else might be doing this? Yahoo, Amazon, Apple, AOL? The credit card companies? The Patriot Act makes it easy for them to justify it because they'd have had to comply anyway.

I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone who knows of any backdoors in commercial software at the government's request.

Posted on March 16, 2006

Porn in the USA

by David Holtzman

IBill, the predominant billing company in the turgid adult payment service industry has leaked customer information across the Internet. Fraud artists and spammers got the personal information of over 17,000,000 users.

They were probably hacked and Wired news reports that credit card numbers don't seem to be included in the data, although most everything else is.

That's still a pretty big number. There's so many levels to view this on. From one perspective, that's a lot of people viewing porn. From another, that's a surprisingly large amount of people that are paying (big bucks) for access, questioning the commonly held notion that free porn is widely accessed on the Net. From the privacy perspective, this is absolutely appalling and it's a shame that it had to be the porn industry that got caught. I guarantee that if the 700 club's financial servers got hacked, this would be front page news and there would be a major FBI investigation.

But alas it's porn. I'm sure that conventional wisdom among legislators is that porn consumers deserve what they get or don't get.

When will Congress hold the custodians of personal information responsible for data breachs?

Posted on March 15, 2006

The Patriot Act is signed

by David Holtzman

On Thursday, President Bush signed the new Patriot Act into law. All but two of the provisions have been made permanent. A few have been watered down. The two that had 4 year sunsets attached were the "roving wiretap" part and the ability to get business records. Libraries acting in their "traditional capacity" are now exempt from National Security Letters.

The biggest problem with the Patriot Act IMHO comes from the Bush administration's defense of the Act which boils down to their traditional "trust me" argument. They claim that there is no recorded case of civil libery violations using the law. This is arguably not true, but nevertheless begs an interesting question that separates the liberals from the conservatives--"Are you willing to allow a law on the books that could easily be abused, just because it hasn't so far and if it does some good by catching terrorists?"

I don't trust the government that much myself, but I'm a curmudgeon. BTW, true conservatives shouldn't like this any better than I do. They should also want to balance the budget, I think.

Posted on March 14, 2006

Cell phone woes

by David Holtzman

To quote Howard Beale, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." I'm not talking about the war or even the Patriot Act; I'm talking about cell phones.

Cell phone service sucks.

It's bad on several levels:

- The coverage sucks. Every carrier has huge dead zones, some in the middle of large metropolitan areas. They're supposed to be a utility...we wouldn't let the power company get away with this.
- The rates suck. They're all over the map.
- GSM sucks. Everyone else in the world has working GSM. It's still a curiousity here outside the big city areas.
- Customer service sucks. Just try and fix a billing problem.

So what I'm wondering is why this is? Is crappy service built into these business models? This kind of thing has become endemic to American businesses and it's not what we used to be known for.

People joke about the perpetual "I can't hear you, I have a bad connection" conversations that are a daily event for most of us.

Isn't there something that Congress or the FCC can do to hold the mobile carriers to some minimum level of service?

Posted on March 13, 2006

Dubai or not Dubai

by David Holtzman

The Dubai firm, Dubai Ports World, that was planning on taking over control of management operations at six major U.S. ports has withdrawn its bid.

It seems pretty likely to me that this was done at the behest of the Bush administration who found themselves in a pretty uncomfortable position. The president had vowed to veto Congress if they blocked the sale and Congress was clearly planning on doing so. The president's popularity is as low as its ever been and his political clout is greatly diminished. Their withdrawal saved him from a pretty awkward moment when he used his veto to protect his mideast friends, especially in light of the mismanagement of the Katrina disaster.

Posted on March 10, 2006

The 10% solution

by David Holtzman

Google announced that it was settling a class-action lawsuit over alleged click-fraud for $90 million. Click fraud is one of the dirty little secrets of advertising model-based online commerce. It is what it sounds like it is--fake clicks. Who would do such a dastardly thing, you ask? Competititors who want to increase ad costs and sometimes the hosting site themselves, because they get paid more for more clicks.

Google got off cheap, in my opinion. Experts say that at least 10% of click-throughs are fake. I suspect that number is closer to 20%. If advertisers understood how random this kind of thing was, they'd rebel against the pricing structure, which would hurt most of the big Internet companies, most of whom derive a substantial part of their revenue from click-throughs (Google's is close to 95%).

I predict that something better will come along and soon. This is a problem begging for a solution. With literally billions of dollars of ad money floating through these companies every quarter, effective ideas will be listened to.

Posted on March 09, 2006

Data, data everywhere...

by David Holtzman

Here's an ugly political secret...Republicans understand technology better than Democrats. Not just Xbox games, TiVos and Treos, but the stuff that really counts--databases. The GOP was first with really understanding direct mail (a la Richard Viguerie) and they appear poised to dominate the upcoming 2008 war of the Internet minds. It's no accident that the Republicans were so effective in voter mobilization in 2004, they know how to reach people and what they want to hear.

Now Harold Ickes, Dep Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House has started a new company called Data Warehouse. According to the Washington Post, they have raised $7.5 in venture money for their new company, whose purpose is to level the playing field with the Republicans by building a Dem-friendly database company.

So, good luck. A dem is a different creature than a republican. Republicans are all about forming into large flying wedges. They are the party of the scrum. Dems are about amplifying the differences, almost basking in the bickering. The resulting confusion is as natural to the blue party as the veldt to a gazelle.

A super great database system could fix this by narrowly segmenting dems into special interest areas. This narrowcasting approach is the future of politics. In the case of the Dems, they become a coalition party forming an alliance between multiple special interest groups. Right now, this ugly matchup happens post-convention after 6 months of ugly name-callling and interest-bashing in the primaries.

I hope this works. One piece of advice for the founders, though...opt-in, okay, guys? A privacy-friendly Democratic data base would be a beautiful thing.

Posted on March 08, 2006

Fiscal terrorism

by David Holtzman

Capitol Hill Blue reports a story of a couple who in a burst of fiscal responsibility, paid off their J.C. Penneys Mastercard. After they sent the $6522 check in, they kept checking online to make sure their account was credited for the payment. After a while of no reaction from Penneys, they called the company, finding out that because the amount was more than they usually paid, they had triggered a "red flag" and were reported to Homeland Defense. Their money stayed frozen until thawed by DHS.

I don't know if this story is true or not. If it is, I'm not surprised and I'm not shocked--I'm less than hopeful for the future. It's too easy to pick at this story, but I will say that some regulatory (cough: Congress) should be monitoring the details of what's being done in the name of security. Some of these precautions may be justified, but it's hard to not think that some mid-level civil servant is sitting in a bullpen somewhere thinking this stuff up.

I have great faith in a system where there are checks and balances. America's strength has always been its broad spread of governmental powers, such that someone in DC is watching out for us. The concept of regulatory oversight has become severely limited since 9/11, to each of our civic detriment.

Posted on March 07, 2006

Once and future Internet fundraising

by David Holtzman

The Washington Post reported today the results of a survey done by George Washington University about the state of online political fundraising.

The most significant conclusion was that online contributors were more representative of the middle class as well as a having a higher percentage of women and being more willing to contribute without being solicited.

The report said that the Internet "...is perhaps the single most important development in political fundraising..."

There's also a difference between Dems and Republicans. More than half of ALL Dems gave online, twice that of Republicans.

So, what's it mean?

Simple.

I will make a prediction: "The Internet will be in 2008 what television was to the election of 1960."

I am taking hamburger bets from all comers who would like to dispute this.

We have no idea, no idea at all, how significant this technology will be. Most important of all, in this election, it will no longer be technology, anymore than a flashlight is.

It will be used for laser-like issues targetting and for message broadcasting both and it will either overtake PACs or at least compete with them as major alternate funding sources.

This would seem to be good news for Democrats.

Any candidate who ignores this does so at his or her own peril.

Posted on March 06, 2006

Gotta have more cowbell

by David Holtzman

When the video ipod came out, I ignored it--at first. Why would someone want to see video on that small a screen?

But eventually I upgraded. Once I had one, of course, I needed to download some video and see how the thing worked. Surprisingly, it's not that bad. You can amuse yourself for quite a while in an airport watching the handheld device. The screen's small, but usable.

Music videos are a natural. You can also buy TV shows from itunes and I found out that it was very easy to convert DVDs into an mpeg file and watch them on the iPod.

So, first thought...the pricing is wrong. Music videos are $1.99. That's high, but I could almost justify that. Entire dvds like the "Best of" series from Saturday Night Live are $9.99. That's fine.

But, here's the rub...Saturday Night Live skits are $1.99 a piece. Yes, that's right. 45 second skits are 2 bucks. This pricing is way too high. In fact, I will virtually guarantee that this pricing will force consumers past that magic ethical twilight zone, where any lingering thoughts about "piracy" go out the window. It's easy to feel guilty about ripping off a vido for a buck, but $1.99 just seems greedy to me.

Having said that, I should add that the one exception to my argument is the Christopher Walken "Cowbell" sketch, which is, of course, priceless.

Posted on March 03, 2006

When the levees break

by David Holtzman

I've repeatedly said that data never goes away. Everyone should assume that if something is once committed to digital memory, it is floating around somewhere, even if it's thought deleted. Sometimes even if you don't think that it's recorded, it might be anyway.

President Bush found that out again with the new FEMA tapes that AP leaked yesterday. They show deliberations that the President and Chertoff had prior to Katrina, discussing the possibility that the levees might break and even that the Superdome wasn't structurally sound.

This would seem to make the President a liar when on September 1st, on Good Morning America, Bush said: "I don't think anyone anticipated breach of the levees...Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

It's also damning that he's seen to not ask a single question during the briefing.

Everything is being recorded. Everything is accessible to someone, someday, somehow. It's a brand new political world when around every digital corner there's a smoking gun shop.

Posted on March 02, 2006

The king of all lawsuits

by David Holtzman

Howard Stern is an enigma. An intelligent and articulate man, he uses all of his considerable powers of expression to put words around every adolescent males' fantasies. He's a popular guy.

Stern jumped to Sirius radio recently for a reported $220 million contract. Now he's being sued by CBS for doing so.

But there's more at stake here than lesbian strippers or dwarf spanking or bologna slapping; it's about the future of media.

Broadcast or narrowcast? Federal content control or unregulated content?

These are way more significant questions. It will be interesting to see if any of this comes out in the suit.

If Stern is successful, then pay radio, as we know it now, is effectively dead.

There's the money, sure. There's also the freedom. More importantly, there's the development of a targeted audience who is willing to pay a premium for specialized content. That model is highly replicatable and is the future of satellite broadcasting.

Unlike cable television, this change will be quick and abrupt. The content is already there. The switch to satellite from broadcast is about removing restrictions, rather than developing content.
bababoie.

Posted on March 01, 2006