Wi-Fi Fight Brews in Big Easy

After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network—originally deployed to link surveillance cameras—to anyone who needed it. For free.

“Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses,” Mr. Meffert told Red Herring. With Internet service still down in more than half the city, he estimates more than 15,000 people use the city’s 512 kbps (kilobits per second) network.

The city now has a daytime population of about a quarter-million, but about a third of the city is still without even basic phone service. The population is expected to swell this summer as more storm refugees return when the school year ends.

…

Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree. State law prohibits cities from providing more than a relatively sluggish 128-kbps network, but New Orleans offered its faster network as an emergency relief effort.

“The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,” said Mr. Meffert.

BellSouth declined to comment. But telecommunications and cable giants have tried to restrict city-sponsored broadband initiatives in other parts of the United States. Several states bar local governments from competing with private telecommunications services.

Rough. And perhaps a stumbling block for the recent announcement by the Dems to have broadband nationwide in five years.

In the 80s:

Today:

Is music dead yet?

(Kudos to Voidstar for the nifty DRM murdering logo.)

UPDATE: What is DRM?

Shaun’s hosting this week’s extensive VBC. Take a peek at what’s been happening in the Virginia blogosphere.

Not sure how long this will be up, but I just visited Virginia Conservative and got the following:

HACKED By: BrEakerS
CraZiest,Dr.Death & Sw33t-Virus

Admin Your website is not secure enough,patch up your system and have a nice day

Specail Greetz to:Net^Devil,Team-Evil,Yanis,WizardZ,Red Devils Crew,[OverclockiX],The Bekir,Yusuf,KaShTwa & All the Muslim hackers

Email- Craziest@gmail.com

Childish and a waste of time and effort. If this was some kid thinking he’s doing the server admins a favor he’s sadly mistaken.

If you want to give people a heads up on their server security, e-mail them and let them know, don’t just barge in and screw things up. Grow up, people.

Update: The site is back up, good as new.

Snakes On A Plane

Scroll down for the preview. This movie’s gonna ROCK!

Though I think this version would probably rock more. (Link has cursing, so maybe it’s NSFW.)

FEC Won’t Regulate Internet Politics

The Federal Election Commission decided Monday that the nation’s new campaign finance law will not apply to most political activity on the Internet.

In a 6-0 vote, the commission decided to regulate only paid political ads placed on another person’s Web site.

The decision means that bloggers and online publications will not be covered by provisions of the new election law. Internet bloggers and individuals will therefore be able to use the Internet to attack or support federal candidates without running afoul of campaign spending and contribution limits.

Smart move on the part of the FEC. Enforcement would be next to impossible and the implications of such a law would be so far reaching that it’d just be chaotic. As you were, bloggers.

If you’re on the web, have RealPlayer, and wanna hear my sexy voice and some sweet cover songs, check out Under The Covers on WVCW tonight at 8. Every Sunday I toss out an hour of nothing but covers. Enjoy.

* Yes, it says there’s a Windows stream but it doesn’t work, so you’ll need RealPlayer or RealAlternative. Sorry, working on that Windows thing.

Good job, Patriots!

How good a job?

George Mason (27-7), having by far the best season in school history, had never won an NCAA tournament game until it beat half of last year’s Final Four — Michigan State and No. 3 seed North Carolina — back-to-back in the first two rounds. Now it can say it has beaten the last two national champions — Connecticut and North Carolina.

Who’s next?

Florida’s currently up by 5 on Villanova. Will the last #1 standing not make it to the Final Four?

Shaun Kenney (Kenney The Elder, to some) has taken Vince over at Too Conservative to task for “reporting” the internal happenings of yesterday’s GOP state central meeting. While Shaun harps on Vince’s attributing a vote to Jim Rich when it was actually Rich’s proxy doing the voting, a lapse Vince “corrected” by adding *Jim Rich’s PROXY to the end of his post, the main point Shaun is trying to make is this:

RPV’s State Central Committee has a tradition of being an egalitarian and spirited meeting where top-level Republicans can speak their minds about the condition and direction of the Republican Party.

Abusing that latitude for political grandstanding is horrific in my opinion.

There’s a worse proposition here: Bloggers in general are treated with a bit of contempt. Why? Precisely for this reason. Why should anyone trust me (or bloggers on the whole) if I am just going to run to the ol’ blog and post the conversation?

To stretch this further, the problem a post like Vince’s is that is adds to the list of problems people and the mainstream media have with blogging.

Lack of tact.

There is currently a struggle over how to view blogs, whether or not they are a viable source of news and information independently, should be viewed as supplemental material to the “real” outlets, or should just be ignored as rumor mills and propaganda machines. Many blogs want to be taken seriously, as a whole, and viewed as alternative news sources for the world. Yet when posts are made that highlight some of the largest issues the MSM raises with blogging (lack of editorial oversight, lack of tact, reporting rumors, no fact checking, no actual retractions), bloggers lose ground in this back and forth tug of war.

You also run into the question of whether or not bloggers believe in (or should believe in) a certain level of ethics or privilege that many journalists offer. If nothing is off the record in blogging, then blogging is never going to be able to play this big boy game of journalism.

Bloggers need to take time before they post to step back and think about what they’re doing. Is what they’re posting valuable in any way? What is the impact of what they are posting? What kind of responsibility are they ready to take for what they are posting? Are you willing to swallow your pride should what you are posting be proven false?

And these are questions people who want to be taken serously need to ask every time they post because blogs are rarely evaluated as a whole that takes into consideration the 90% of decent posts on the site. No, what people will take from a blog is the one post they see and if that post is irresponsible, incompetent, irrelevant or just downright ignorant, then you have not only harmed your site and yourself but the entire movement for responsible and respectable blogging.

U.S. to Contract Hong Kong Firm to Help Scan for Nuclear Materials Passing From Bahamas to U.S.

While President Bush recently reassured Congress that foreigners would not manage security at U.S. ports, the Hutchison deal in the Bahamas illustrates how the administration is relying on foreign companies at overseas ports to safeguard cargo headed to the United States.

Hutchison Whampoa is the world’s largest ports operator and among the industry’s most-respected companies. It was an early adopter of U.S. anti-terror measures. But its billionaire chairman, Li Ka-Shing, also has substantial business ties to China’s government that have raised U.S. concerns over the years.

“Li Ka-Shing is pretty close to a lot of senior leaders of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” said Larry M. Wortzel, head of a U.S. government commission that studies China security and economic issues. But Wortzel said Hutchison operates independently from Beijing, and he described Li as “a very legitimate international businessman.”

“One can conceive legitimate security concerns and would hope either the Homeland Security Department or the intelligence services of the United States work very hard to satisfy those concerns,” Wortzel said.

Three years ago, the Bush administration effectively blocked a Hutchison subsidiary from buying part of a bankrupt U.S. telecommunications company, Global Crossing Ltd., on national security grounds.

And a U.S. military intelligence report, once marked “secret,” cited Hutchison in 1999 as a potential risk for smuggling arms and other prohibited materials into the United States from the Bahamas.

Interesting. Let’s wait for the outcry.

I saw something about this a while back and just found this good summary of what’s going on with a Roe v. Wade for men:

A 25-year-old computer programmer in Michigan, Dubay wants to know why it is only women who have “reproductive rights.” He is upset about having to pay child support for a baby he never wanted. Not only did his former girlfriend know he didn’t want children, says Dubay, she had told him she was infertile. When she got pregnant nonetheless, he asked her to get an abortion or place the baby for adoption. She decided instead to keep her child and secured a court order requiring him to pay $500 a month in support.

Not fair, Dubay complains. His ex-girlfriend chose to become a mother. It was her choice not to have an abortion, her choice to carry the baby to term, her choice not to have the child adopted. She even had the option, under the “baby safe haven” laws most states have enacted, to simply leave her newborn at a hospital or police station. Roe v. Wade gives her and all women the right - the constitutional right! - to avoid parenthood and its responsibilities. Dubay argues that he should have the same right, and has filed a federal lawsuit that his supporters are calling “Roe v. Wade for men.” Drafted by the National Center for Men, it contends that as a matter of equal rights, men who don’t want a child should be permitted, early in pregnancy, to get “a financial abortion” releasing them from any future responsibility to the baby.

Personally I don’t agree with this at all, man-up and take responsibility, but still an interesting argument in this day and age.

South Dakota may have banned all abortions but access may still exist within the state:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade would put the issue back to the states and tribal land is governed by federal law. If the Supreme Court says abortion should not be a federal issue, will this alternative spread as abortion bans do? Interesting adaptation.

Boing Boing had an interesting post over the weekend about the ownership of the term “super-hero”. Technorati’s a good way to find out what others had to say about the post.

Free Blue Note Records Sampler, a label of some great jazz tunes.

Let’s see how upset folks get with the Dubai bid for U.S. plants that make military equipment.

Dubai International last year spent $1 billion for a stake in DaimlerChrysler AG and 800 million pounds ($1.4 billion) for Tussauds Group, owner of London’s Madame Tussauds waxworks museum.

Doncasters, which is based in Melbourne, England, has plants in Rincon, Georgia; Groton, Connecticut, and other U.S. sites. Its customers include Boeing Co. and General Electric Co., according to information on its Web site.

Personally, I think both this and the port deal are non-issues. Security is in American hands, employees are American, hell, probably even unionized. Just because they manage the plant or port doesn’t mean they actually control what comes in or out or can hide it from those working the floor or security.