[Note: This comment comes from reader Glenn Fleishman. DLH]

From: Glenn Fleishman
Date: January 31, 2008 3:50:35 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Offer Ends C Block Bidding, Triggers Open Access Provisions

Dewayne Hendricks on 1/31/08 at 3:08 PM wrote:

The offer amount also ended bidding on that block, but the winner
won’t be named until the other portions have been auctioned – that
could take weeks.

As far as I can tell, this is incorrect.

The bidding on C Block continues until there are no bids after waivers have been exhausted and a variety of other bidding rules have lapsed (in terms of participants bidding on other licenses and such).

Saul Hansell got this incorrect (it’s easy to see why) and then corrected himself here:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/spectrum-auction-the-c-block-bidding-is-over-at-47-billion/

Wireless Week is reporting the bidding is ongoing.
–
Glenn Fleishman
seattle . washington

[Note: This comment comes from reader Chuck Jackson. DLH]

From: “Charles Jackson”
Date: January 31, 2008 4:12:32 PM PST
To: “‘Dewayne Hendricks’”
Subject: RE: [Dewayne-Net] Rigging the elections

There might be more (or less) to the story. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis

Chuck

[Note: This item comes from reader Randall. DLH]

From: Randall
Date: January 31, 2008 3:35:37 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: TiVo v. EchoStar?

TiVo’s Patent Infringement Claims Upheld
TIVO, INC. V. ECHOSTAR COMMUNICATIONS CORP.
(U.S. Fed. Cir., Jan. 31, 2008) – The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals upheld TiVo’s claims that EchoStar’s Dish Network infringes on one of its DVR patents.

Read more: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/fed/061574p.pdf

[Note: This item comes from reader Randall. DLH]

From: Randall
Date: January 31, 2008 3:09:39 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks , David Farber , johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Fwd: [Cuckoosnest] Just heard this on All Things Considered …

[Links @ the site - a few, anyway]

Brain electrodes can improve learning
Memory-prompting abilities of brain stimulation discovered by accident.
Alison Abbott, Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080129/full/news.2008.538.html

An electrode implanted in the brain can help with Parkinson’s… and maybe Alzheimer’s.

Electrodes implanted into the brain of a patient undergoing an experimental treatment for obesity have surprisingly improved his memory skills.

The startling and unexpected effects — reported in Annals of Neurology 1 — have prompted the Canadian team of neurologists to launch a new deep-brain stimulation (DBS) trial in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. Three patients have already had electrodes implanted, says neurosurgeon Andres Lozano from the University of Toronto’s Toronto Western Research Institute. “The surgery seems safe and the results are promising,” he says.

During DBS, a hair-thin electrode with four contact points is placed in a very precise area of the brain. Each contact can be stimulated individually with different frequencies of electric current — or switched off — by remote control. The tiny currents are intended to activate specific neural circuits in the brain that under-perform in particular disorders. The procedure is most often used to treat Parkinson’s disease but, in the past few years, neurosurgeons have been experimenting with treating psychiatric disorders including depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The 50-year old patient described in the paper was the first to have DBS for obesity, in 2003. At around 190 kilograms his weight was life-threatening, and he had not responded to other forms of therapy. The surgeons chose to place the electrode in the hypothalamus, a small almond-sized area of the brain just above its base, because stimulating this area of the brain in animals can affect the amount of food they want to eat. In the past, neurosurgeons have tried to treat obesity by removing part of the hypothalamus.

Déjà vu
Lozano was surprised when the patient announced, during test brain stimulations in the operating theatre, that he was feeling a profound sense of déjà vu. The patient recalled what he considered to be a pleasant memory: a scene in a park with friends from about 30 years ago. The more intense the current, the more details of the scene he could fill in.

Prompting a memory from brain stimulation is not uncommon, but the researchers were intrigued that this happened from an electrode in the hypothalamus.

In a battery of neuropsychological tests performed before and after the surgery, the research team found that the patient’s general mental performance remained basically unchanged. But his performance in complex memory tests involving interpreting and remembering pairs of words was dramatically improved when the electrodes were switched on. The tests were designed so that neither the patient nor the experimenter knew whether the brain was being stimulated during the test.

This specific type of memory improvement is thought to be linked to an area of the brain called the hippocampus. When the researchers looked at the patient’s brain using electroencephalography, they found that electric stimulation activated areas around the hippocampus. They team propose that the electrodes must inadvertently stimulate a bundle of neurons known as the fornix, which passes through the hypothalamus en route to the hippocampus.

Window into the brain
“The hypothalamus is a crowded place in terms of functions, with lots of things going on,” says Lozano. “That’s why we test the effect of stimulating each of the contact points in turn in the operating theatre — if something untoward happens, then we can just switch them off again.” But the unanticipated side-effect on memory is a positive one.

Although this is a only a single-patient study, Lozano says that the implications are very important. “For the first time we have a window into the neural circuitry of memory in humans — about which very little is known — that we can both access and modify.”

In March 2007 Lozano began a pilot study to investigate whether such stimulation could help to improve the failing memories of Alzheimer’s patients, before their disease is so far advanced that their neural circuits have been destroyed. If the procedure proves safe in six patients, he will start an larger international study to look at efficacy.

Unexpected discussion
“It is very exciting, and it has never been done before,” says Richard Henson, an expert on human memory at the University of Cambridge, UK. “It is one of those rare cases when it is necessary for medical reasons to stimulate the hypothalamus, and it is telling us something about the neural circuitry involved in learning.”

“It’s an interesting example of the sort of unexpected finding we may start to see as different brain areas are tested with DBS,” says Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. “It suggests that enhanced brain functioning — and not just reversal of abnormal behaviour — is possible with DBS, and that’s going to prompt a lot of discussion among scientists and ethicists.”

Whether the DBS procedure will prove helpful in obesity, as originally anticipated, is less clear. The patient does find his appetite is suppressed when the electrodes are switched on, but he has not lost weight as he tends to switch them off when he wants to eat.

[Note: This item comes from reader Jim March. DLH]

From: Jim March
Date: January 31, 2008 2:31:21 PM PST
To: Bob Seawright , Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: rigging the elections

This is of a testimony of a programmer in front a government hearing on 1-11-08!

This programmer from an electronic voting machine company spills the beans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq9WVuKGwOM

[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]

Offer Ends C Block Bidding, Triggers Open Access Provisions
01/31/2008
http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/offer-ends-700mhz-c-block-bidding.html

Things have taken a turn for the better in the 700MHz spectrum auction. After a couple of days of uncertainty, a bid came through that triggered the open access provisions on the nationwide C Block.

The offer amount also ended bidding on that block, but the winner won’t be named until the other portions have been auctioned – that could take weeks.

An anonymous bidder ponied up $4.71 billion on Thursday during the 17th round of bidding. That amount surpassed the reserve of $4.64 billion required by the FCC for the open access conditions to become effective.

Auction rules keep the identity of the 214 approved bidders secret, but Google Inc. last year pledged to put up the $4.6 billion if the FCC would adopt an open-access framework for this auction. Triggering the open-access rules means mobile phone users in the United States at some point will be able to use any device they like on that section of the 700MHz spectrum.

Verizon Wireless is considered to be the other likely bidder for the C Block.

[Note: This comment comes from friend Ken DiPietro. DLH]

From: ken
Date: January 31, 2008 8:08:19 AM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Philly eyes options if EarthLink abandons city Wi-Fi effort

“Phillis said he thinks ‘tens of thousands’ of subscribers are now using
the new network but, he added, ‘honestly, I don’t know.’”

The above quote is my favorite line from the article.
The last four words of that quote seems to sums up the entire project.

[Note: This item comes from friend Ken DiPietro. DLH]

Philly eyes options if EarthLink abandons city Wi-Fi effort
Matt Hamblen
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9059958&pageNumber=1

January 29, 2008 (Computerworld) Philadelphia’s CIO said today that he believes there is a 75% chance that EarthLink Inc. will sell or abandon its ambitious citywide Wi-Fi network operation in a year. As a result, the city is already making contingency plans in case that happens.

Terry Phillis, who has held the CIO post for the past year, said the city expects to know more within 60 days about what Atlanta-based EarthLink will do regarding its Philadelphia operation. Although a sale of the Wi-Fi network to another private network builder and operator would be preferable to having the city take control of the project, Philadelphia officials want to be prepared for either possibility, Phillis said in an interview today.

“We consider [the Wi-Fi network] an asset for the city,” Phillis said. “Our priority is to get it completed, to service the digital divide, to enhance tourism and to serve mobile city workers. But I can’t talk a lot about our plans” if Earthlink leaves.

Construction started in earnest in May, and more than 70% of the 135-square-mile network is now in place, Phillis said. EarthLink has estimated that building the network and running it for 10 years will cost $22 million.

EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff in November assured former Philadelphia Mayor John Street that EarthLink would finish the 135-square-mile Wi-Fi mesh network, Phillis said. Huff offered that assurance, he said, even after EarthLink on Nov. 16 issued a short statement in which it said that it was considering “strategic alternatives” to its $40 million nationwide municipal wireless business.

Phillis said he expects EarthLink will leave the Philadelphia project. He based that prediction on EarthLink’s November statement and its announcement last August that it would lay off 900 workers by the end of 2007. “That statement said to me that Wi-Fi is no longer in their strategic initiatives, and they wouldn’t make that statement if they were continuing here,” he said.

Phillis said he thinks “tens of thousands” of subscribers are now using the new network but, he added, “honestly, I don’t know.”

EarthLink has not divulged the number of subscribers in Philadelphia and could not be reached for immediate comment today. The city and the taxpayers are not paying anything for the network buildout or operation, and the city has no legal right to such information under the existing contract, Phillis explained. That contract also gives Philadelphia the right to reject a future buyer.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Ken DiPietro. DLH]

Copy a CD, owe $1.5 million under “gluttonous” PRO-IP Act

By Nate Anderson | Published: January 29, 2008 – 09:57PM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080129-statutory-damages-not-high-enough.html

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA’s perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become law.

The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. We’ve reported on the bill before, noting that Google’s top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most “outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.”

The industries pushing it (music, especially) have an “unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered,” he said.

Public Knowledge head Gigi Sohn testified before Congress last year that statutory damages are already “disproportionate penalties for infringement,” pointing that it hardly seems fair to bill someone like Jammie Thomas more than $9,000 per song when each track costs a buck. Even accounting for a punitive penalty, that seems absurdly high.

Both Patry and Sohn attended a Copyright Office roundtable on statutory damages a few days ago, and Public Knowledge’s staff attorney Sherwin Siy has posted a fascinating writeup of the closed-door session.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Robert Berger. DLH]

From: “Robert J. Berger”
Date: January 30, 2008 10:14:52 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks , David Farber
Subject: Cheap Hydrogen from Solar Energy

Cheap Hydrogen
A new process uses sunlight and a nanostructured catalyst to inexpensively and efficiently generate hydrogen for fuel.
By Kevin Bullis
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20134/?nlid=845

Nanoptek, a startup based in Maynard, MA, has developed a new way to make hydrogen from water using solar energy. The company says that its process is cheap enough to compete with the cheapest approaches used now, which strip hydrogen from natural gas, and it has the further advantage of releasing no carbon dioxide.

Nanoptek, which has been developing the new technology in part with grants from NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE), recently completed its first venture-capital round, raising $4.7 million that it will use to install its first pilot plant. The technology uses titania, a cheap and abundant material, to capture energy from sunlight. The absorbed energy releases electrons, which split water to make hydrogen. Other researchers have used titania to split water in the past, but Nanoptek researchers found a way to modify titania to absorb more sunlight, which makes the process much cheaper and more efficient, says John Guerra, the company’s founder and CEO.

Researchers have known since the 1970s that titania can catalyze reactions that split water. But while titania is a good material because it’s cheap and doesn’t degrade in water, it only absorbs ultraviolet light, which represents a small fraction of the energy in sunlight. Other researchers have tried to increase the amount of sunlight absorbed by pairing titania with dyes or dopants, but dyes aren’t nearly as durable as titania, and dopants haven’t produced efficient systems, says John Turner, who develops hydrogen generation technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, CO.

Nanoptek’s approach uses insights from the semiconductor industry to make titania absorb more sunlight. Guerra says that chip makers have long known that straining a material so that its atoms are slightly pressed together or pulled apart alters the material’s electronic properties. He found that depositing a coating of titania on dome-like nanostructures caused the atoms to be pulled apart. “When you pull the atoms apart, less energy is required to knock the electrons out of orbit,” he says. “That means you can use light with lower energy–which means visible light” rather than just ultraviolet light.

The strain on the atoms also affects the way that electrons move through the material. Too much strain, and the electrons tend to be reabsorbed by the material before they split water. Guerra says that the company has had to find a balance between absorbing more sunlight and allowing the electrons to move freely out of the material. Nanoptek has also developed cheaper ways to manufacture the nanostructured materials. Initially, the company used DVD manufacturing processes, but it has since moved on to a still-cheaper proprietary process.