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

From: Randall <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: September 30, 2008 2:11:25 PM PDT
To: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>, David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: “All servers are busy. Your email will be ignored in the order it was received”

House limits constituent e-mails to prevent crash
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 09/30/08 01:16 PM [ET]
The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill.

As a result, some constituents may get a ‘try back at a later time’ response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote.

“We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn’t completely crash,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website and member e-mail services.

[SNIP]

The error message in its entirety reads:

“The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of e-mail traffic. The Write Your Representative function is therefore intermittently available. While we realize communicating to your Members of Congress is critical, we suggest attempting to do so at a later time, when demand is not so high. System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience.”

<http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-limits-constituent-e-mails-to-prevent-crash-2008-09-30.html>

[Note: This item comes from friend Brian Berg. Cassidy is right about Paul, he most certainly doesn't brag about himself! Its nice to see him get some of the credit and recognition that he deserves for his accomplishments over the years. DLH]

From: “Brian Berg” <brianberg@gmail.com>
Date: September 28, 2008 4:09:46 PM PDT
To: “Dewayne Hendricks” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Paul Baran in SJ Mercury News

Cassidy: Internet pioneer Paul Baran gets richly deserved honor

By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News
Article Launched: 09/25/2008 01:00:00 PM PDT
<http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10548833?nclick_check=1>

This is a column to brag about Paul Baran, because Lord knows he’s not going to do it himself.

The guy is a brilliant innovator and a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He’s on his way to the White House to be honored Monday for giving us some of the key building blocks of the Internet.

And what does Baran think about it all? What will it be like to have the president of the United States present him with a National Medal of Technology and Innovation?
“Beats the hell out of me,” Baran says.

None of this is to say that Baran is too big to be bothered. It’s more that he wishes others wouldn’t bother with the fuss. Technology is a team sport, he says, with each innovator building on what others accomplished before him or her.

“Each of us does a little piece,” Baran, 82, says. “I’ve done one thing. So then you get credit for doing the whole damn thing and that’s not so.”
That’s what makes Baran special. Talking to him in the kitchen of his Atherton ranch house, listening to his self-deprecating asides and seeing his eyes sparkle as he talks about the wonder of stumbling upon something new, it’s clear he embodies the best of the spirit of Silicon Valley.

Forget the awards. Baran is a man with an abiding optimism who’d rather talk about how the Internet still has tremendous potential to change the world for the better.
“He’s very much of the old school,” says Paul Saffo, a valley essayist, futurist and friend of Baran’s. “You serve. You innovate. And you don’t flash your toys to your friends. Frankly, the current generation of entrepreneurs could learn a thing or two from the culture of his generation.”

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Janos Gereben. DLH]

From: janosG <janosg@gmail.com>
Date: September 29, 2008 8:29:47 AM PDT
To: Dewayne <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: ‘Mobile Madness’ – the Interphone Study

<http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12295222>

“LONG-TERM mobile-phone use increases risk of benign tumours!” “Clean bill of health for the mobile!” “Mobile phone-cancer link not proven!” Those who have followed the saga of whether or not mobile phones are damaging people’s brains are used to contradictory headlines. A decade of coverage has left readers and viewers more confused than enlightened, with news reports alternating between alarming claims and soothing reassurances. Yet even by the standards of modern news, it is unusual to see such contradictory headlines about the same piece of research. Which is why a study, called Interphone, provides a cautionary tale.

Interphone began in 2000, ended in 2006, cost $30m and involved around 50 scientists working in 13 countries on 14,000 people. It has, however, still to come to a settled conclusion. A draft of its supposed findings was circulated in June, and Elisabeth Cardis of the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, who led it, thought until recently that a final paper would be submitted this month. Now, though, it looks as if that will not even happen this year.

<snip>

[Note: This comment comes from reader Tom Williams. DLH]

From: Tom Williams <Tom@AirNetworking.com>
Date: September 29, 2008 6:40:37 AM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] The Big Picture | Cablevision DNS Redirect Nonsense

Verizon Fios is similar (identical?) — Their DNS servers
redirect errors to a Verizon server. What really steamed
me: after I had upgraded to a business-grade connection
(read: “Pay us three times as much per month and we’ll
unblock port 80″), I _still_ got the error redirect.

A side-effect of that: traceroute was broken. A twenty
hop connection was reported as two hops — and one of them
was my access point.

The eventual solution, provided by an obscure “opt out”
page, was to use different DNS servers from the ones they
provided when I “upgraded” my service. This also fixed
traceroute.

-Tom Williams

This story appeared on Network World at

<http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/wireless/2008/092908wireless1.html>

G1, other smartphones push 3G limits
Apps for latest phones might fuel Wi-Fi use
Wireless Alert By Joanie Wexler , Network World , 09/29/2008

We call ‘em phones. But the new T-Mobile G1, the Apple iPhone and other touch-enabled handsets making the nightly news are really tiny multifunction computers optimized for music, video, photos or advertising. They also happen to make over-the-air phone calls. The applications being designed for them gobble up mass quantities of bandwidth, something that isn’t all that plentiful in 3G networks.

The latest stir, of course, surrounds the T-Mobile G1 smartphone, built by HTC and loaded with Google applications. Announced last week and due to ship next month, the G1 is the first phone to run on the Google-championed Android open-source mobile operating system. “Google,” “open source” and “first” are at the heart of last week’s blaring headlines that spotlighted the G1 as something special.

[snip]

[Note: This comment comes from a reader of Dave Farber's IP list who doesn't wish attribution. DLH]

Date: September 28, 2008 6:16:18 AM PDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>, dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Subject: not for IP Re: [IP] Google patents tech that could overturn telcos

in Japan we used to own a box that was readily available at Yodobashi
Camera, LAOX, et al. that took advantage of arcane rules of pricing
telecom between local, long distance, location specific anomalies,
timing of the call & routed the calls along the cheapest route – in
1994 … AKA killer prior art …

Japan of course at that time required you to pay 70,000 yen (about
700 dollars in those days – later deregulation mostly removed that
requirement but I never saw any of money phone rights paid back or
rec’d equity in NT&T) to own a phone “right” that was paid *into* NTT
- – which had only recently been partially deregulated – ISDN was still
hot & my e-mails through MCI cost 100 yen per 100 words plus 100 yen
per one minute of connectivity.

this is a patent “publication” – this is not a issued patent – it is
neither novel nor nonobvious, IMHO – and reflects what is wrong with
the patent system, namely that companies such as Google file this
kind of obvious subject matter & lobby against the system which they
claim issues obvious subject matter patents.

a real shame & sham on real innovation.

sincerely,

Main Street turns against Wall Street

A populist backlash is changing America’s political climate. Inflamed by the financial crisis and bailouts, a form of class warfare could haunt business leaders for years to come.
By Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief
Last Updated: September 28, 2008: 11:03 AM ET
<http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/26/news/economy/easton_backlash.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008092811>

NEW YORK (Fortune) — In one frenzied month Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke remade Wall Street. Along the way they may also have recast American politics. A month of historic government interventions shows signs of triggering a political version of climate change – unleashing a new era of class fury that could hurt U.S. companies, business leaders, and wealthy investors for years.

“A potential calamity,” predicts Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. “If the reactions we’re seeing hold, we could have real spasmodic anger directed at businesses and corporations.” And the timing will have consequences, says financier and onetime GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “Unfortunately, politicians have seized on the politics of envy,” he told Fortune, “and they are stoking it this election year like I’ve never seen in my lifetime.”

Compared to this, Enron was a warm-up exercise. For all the public outrage over accounting scandals seven years ago, the result in Washington was limited to a financial reporting rule that most Americans have never heard of (though many in the business community still consider Sarbanes-Oxley a destructive overreaction).

By contrast, the implosion of Wall Street, followed by Paulson’s escalating series of multibillion-dollar rescues, has fired up populist sentiments that were already building in American politics, promising to reshape legislative battles over everything from tax and trade policies to federal regulation. Union leaders like the AFL-CIO’s John Sweeney suddenly sound as if they’re in the mainstream of public opinion with statements like this: “One thing is certain. No one – no politician, no investment banker, no television commentator, no economist – should be able to say again with a straight face that here in the United States we just let markets do whatever markets do and everything works out for the best.”

Washington hath no fury like Middle America scorned – and there’s reason to think it will only get uglier. The government’s massive new financial commitments will severely tie the next President’s hands in addressing middle-class concerns.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Edward DeWath. This video was sent to me from several readers. Its gone viral on the Net, so here it is. DLH]

From: Edward DeWath <dewath@prodigy.net>
Date: September 27, 2008 11:41:19 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Tina Fey As Sarah Palin: Katie Couric SNL Skit (VIDEO)

Tina Fey returned to Saturday Night Live to reprise her widely hailed impersonation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The sketch focused on an interview Palin recently gave to CBS News’ Katie Couric, including an exchange about Russia. Amy Poehler, who played Hillary Clinton in the previous skit, plays the role of Katie Couric. See the skit below.

[WATCH]
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/27/tina-fey-as-sarah-palin-k_n_129956.html>

RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

[Note: This item comes from friend Esme Vos. DLH]

From: Esme Vos <esme@muniwireless.com>
Date: September 28, 2008 7:02:16 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: The Big Picture | Cablevision DNS Redirect Nonsense

<http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/09/cablevision-dns.html>

[Note: This item comes from friend John McMullen. DLH]

From: “John F. McMullen” <johnmac13@gmail.com>
Date: September 28, 2008 7:50:41 PM PDT
To: “johnmac’s living room” <johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: “Dewayne Hendricks” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Tom Friedman: Green the Bailout

From the New York Times — <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28friedman.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>

Op-Ed Columnist
Green the Bailout

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Many things make me weep about the current economic crisis, but none more than this brief economic history: In the 19th century, America had a railroad boom, bubble and bust. Some people made money; many lost money. But even when that bubble burst, it left America with an infrastructure of railroads that made transcontinental travel and shipping dramatically easier and cheaper.

The late 20th century saw an Internet boom, bubble and bust. Some people made money; many people lost money, but that dot-com bubble left us with an Internet highway system that helped Microsoft, I.B.M. and Google to spearhead the I.T. revolution.

The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and dead derivative contracts that no one can understand.

Worse, we borrowed the money for this bubble from China, and now we have to pay it back — with interest and without any lasting benefit.

Yes, this bailout is necessary. This is a credit crisis, and credit crises involve a breakdown in confidence that leads to no one lending to anyone. You don’t fool around with a credit crisis. You have to overwhelm it with capital. Unfortunately, some people who don’t deserve it will be rescued. But, more importantly, those who had nothing to do with it will be spared devastation. You have to save the system.

But that is not the point of this column. The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

When I need reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream, I talk to my Indian-American immigrant friends who have come here to start new companies — friends like K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy. He e-mailed me a pep talk in the midst of this financial crisis — a note about the difference between surviving and thriving.

“Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival,” said Sridhar. “As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be No. 1.” That is what America is about.

But we have lost focus on that. Our economy is like a car, added Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are the engine.

[snip]