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

Survey shows 84 percent want citywide Wi-Fi, 91 percent expect it when traveling
January 28, 2009 at 7:30 AM
by Esme Vos
<http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/01/28/survey-shows-84-percent-want-citywide-wi-fi/>

A survey conducted by Devicescape, The Cloud and Trustive reveals that 84 percent of respondents want citywide WI-Fi and 91 percent expect Wi-Fi when they are traveling (i.e. when they are in airports, bus terminals, train stations and ferries). Two other interesting figures from the survey: 56% are willing to pay for citywide Wi-Fi access as a utility like water, gas or electricity, although 79 percent believe that Wi-Fi should be free. Here are more interesting results from the survey and my analysis.

(1) Device most often used to connect to Wi-Fi when traveling:

35% iPhone
30% Laptop
20% Nokia phone
6% Windows Mobile for smartphones and other devices
3% Netbook (e.g. Asus EEEPC)
4% Other
1% Blackberry

It’s amazing to see the iPhone up there in the list given that it was only launched two years ago (the 3G version only last year) but bear in mind that many of Devicescape’s users downloaded the Easy Wi-Fi application from the Apple app store. I’d be curious to see the results of next year’s survey. I expect Netbooks to have a larger percentage. Netbooks sold well during the last holiday season despite the financial crisis.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from Bill St. Arnaud's list. DLH]

From: “Bill St. Arnaud” <bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca>
Date: January 29, 2009 7:48:26 AM PST
Subject: [CAnet - news] Competition most important tool to increase broadband deployment

For more information on this item please visit my blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
——————————————-

[Here are a couple of good pointers on why competition may be the most important tool to increase broadband deployment. As far back as August 1993 in an article in Scientific American, it was noted that competition was the main driver for the rate of adoption of many technologies from basic telephony to the PC computer. In that article they compared the rate of adoption of the telephone versus cable, VCR, PC etc. The telephone took over 75 years to reach 50% penetration, while cable TV took 35 years and the PC and VCR less than 15 years. There was a clear correlation between the average cost as expressed in per capita income of these technologies and their rate of adoption. And of course what drove down cost was competition. Where there was lots of competition – PC and VCR, prices dropped and adoption rates skyrocketed. Where there was no competition, as in the case of telephone monopoly, prices and adoption declined very slowly. Excerpts from Scott Bradner’s column and posting by Dirk van der Woude on Gordon Cooks excellent Arch-Econ list – BSA]

<http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2009/012709-bradner.html?fsrc=rss-columns>

Obama’s broadband stimulus: throwing money at wrong target?

[…]

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just published the results of two surveys on Internet connectivity it ran over the last year. This report shows that not all that many people are blocked from getting broadband Internet access because it is not available in their area. There is no question that there are big parts of the country where broadband access cannot be obtained unless you are willing to use a satellite service. It is hard to tell in how much of the country this is true because of the poor statistics the FCC has been collecting. (See “All’s well with U.S. broadband deployment (says FCC).”)

The Pew report says that some people (more than 15%) have no interest in getting online. Another 6% think the price is too high, and 5% have usability problems. The president’s plan is unlikely to change these numbers much.

The current draft of the broadband part of the stimulus package focuses on providing grants to companies that are willing to deploy wireless or wired broadband in underserved areas. The bill mandates open access to any services that result from such grants.

But, if the Pew report is correct, the stimulus money and open access policies might only result in a few percent of additional broadband users in the United States. Figuring out how to get more competition into the picture so that prices could come down might yield a greater return.

[…].

[From posting by Dirk van der Woude]

ECTA, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, yesterday released the latest installement of its regulatory score card. Good reading and below an interesting quote (pag 12). (Hat tip to ‘you know who you are’).

“It may be tentatively concluded from these and other results found by analysing data reported in the Scorecard together with July 2008 broadband data reported by the European Commission and OECD that infrastructure and effective access-based competition may complement each other in stimulating high broadband take-up rates, and take-up of higher speed services – both of which are necessary to justify and reduce risks in investments in access upgrades such as FTTH.

The positive relationship between incumbent retail DSL lines and LLU also suggests that the benefits of access regulation through increasing overall take-up of broadband may also enable the incumbent to increase its own take-up rates. Although data is not yet available to assess the effects quantitatively, one might also postulate, following similar logic to unbundling of copper loops, that the take-up of fibre access and higher speed services available over it could be stimulated through unbundling and that such expansion and competition could also facilitate increased demand for the incumbents own fibre services.”

Whole report: <http://www.ectaportal.com/en/basic651.html>

[Note: This item comes from reader Brett Glass. DLH]

From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>
Date: January 26, 2009 2:14:00 PM PST
Subject: Broadband stimulus document now online for ready reference

Everyone:

My white paper, “Ensuring Effective Broadband Stimulus: An analysis of the broadband-related provisions of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009,” is now available online for ready reference at

<http://www.brettglass.com/bbstim.pdf>

As mentioned in my earlier message, this document contains a comprehensive analysis of the broadband-related provisions of the “American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009″ — the new “stimulus” bill. Please circulate the above link widely. The provisions of the stimulus bill are vital not only to economic recovery but to the future of broadband in the US. If the stimulus is “done right,” we’ll see a surge in broadband availability and related economic activity. If not, the US will remain behind the curve and the resources devoted to the program will be wasted. The document contains numerous Oxford-style footnotes with “live” hypertext links to useful source material, including the draft legislation itself.

I am available to discuss these ideas and recommendations by phone or e-mail, or (time permitting) to elaborate on them at conferences and symposia where this and related topics are being discussed.

–Brett Glass, LARIAT

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

From: Tom Williams <Tom@AirNetworking.com>
Date: January 26, 2009 5:53:46 AM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Bolivia: The Saudi Arabia Of Lithium

Bolivia wants to be the nation that turns the raw lithium into batteries. It doesn’t want to simply sell off its natural resource and miss out on a profitable opportunity.

I don’t have any opinion about their government, but
in economic terms, good for them! I once visited (and
researched) Ghana, which produces a lot of aluminum.
They ship out ingots worth pennies, and have to buy
manufactured (by others) products worth dollars. At
the time I visited a few years ago, the per capita
income was about $1 a day. Most of that dollar goes
for the day’s food and potable water.

-Tom Williams

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

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: January 26, 2009 3:57:54 AM PST
To: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com, dewayne@warpspeed.com
Subject: It’s keeping to the Limits is what keeps Limits down …

<http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090124/full/news.2009.54.html>
(May require subscription)

How low can you go?

Quantum hologram pushes back the limits of information density.

Eric Hand

A pattern of carbon monoxide molecules (top) creates a quantum hologram
(middle). The input image can be accurately read (bottom).Nature Nanotech.

The ones and zeroes that propel the digital world — the fording of electrons
across a transistor, or hard drives reliant on electrons’ intrinsic spin —
are getting packed into smaller and smaller spaces. The limit was thought to
be set: no more than one bit of information could be encoded on an atom or
electron.

But now, researchers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, have
used another feature of the electron — its tendency to bounce
probabilistically between different quantum states — to create holograms that
pack information into subatomic spaces. By encoding information into the
electron’s quantum shape, or wave function, the researchers were able to
create a holographic drawing that contained 35 bits per electron.

“Our results will challenge some fundamental assumptions people had about the
ultimate limits of information storage,” says graduate student Chris Moon,
one of the authors of the work published in Nature Nanotechnology1. Pushing
the limit

The researchers have built on a tradition of inscribing information in small
spaces that began when eminent physicist Richard Feynman asked in 1959, “Why
cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the
head of a pin?”. A benchmark was achieved in 1989, when researchers at IBM
manipulated individual xenon atoms on a nickel plate to spell out the letters
‘IBM’ across a space just a dozen nanometres wide2. Feynman’s challenge was
met — and then some.

[snip]

[Note: I've posted the Schiff video referenced here to the list in the past. That vid has gone viral and has made Schiff a darling of the MSM of late. I thought this thoughtful essay on him would provide some appropriate balance to all that. DLH]

Peter Schiff Was Wrong
Sunday, January 25, 2009
By Mish
<http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/peter-schiff-was-wrong.html>

There are numerous YouTube videos, articles, and references to Peter Schiff being “right” rapidly circulating the globe. While Schiff was indeed correct about the US imploding, most of the praise heaped on Schiff is simply unwarranted, and I can prove it.

First, let’s start with a look at the claim being made. Peter Schiff concludes many of his articles, books, etc. with the following statement.

   Mr. Schiff is one of the few non-biased investment advisors (not committed solely to the short side of the market) to have correctly called the current bear market before it began and to have positioned his clients accordingly.

Highlight in red is mine.

I would like to see some proof of that statement. Specifically I would like to see the average returns posted by EuroPacific clients for 2008.

I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008. There are many other such claims on the internet. They are entirely believable for the simple reason Schiff’s investment thesis was flat out wrong.

I have an actual portfolio statement from one of Schiff’s clients at the end to discuss, for now let’s discuss the main points of Schiff’s thesis.

Schiff’s Overall Thesis

   * US Equity Markets Will Crash.
   * US Dollar Will Go To Zero (Hyperinflation).
   * Decoupling (The rest of the world would be immune to a US slowdown.
   * Buy foreign equities and commodities and hold them with no exit strategy.

Schiff was correct about point number 1 above. The US equity markets crashed. That was a very good call. Unfortunately, his investment thesis centered on shorting the dollar in a hyperinflation bet, and buying foreign equities rather than shorting US equities.

Furthermore, Schiff made no allowances for being wrong and had no exit strategy whatsoever.

What happened in 2008 was that foreign equities sold off much harder than US equities, and a strengthening US dollar compounded the situation.

In other words, Schiff failed where it matters most: Peter Schiff did not protect his client’s assets. Let’s take a look how, and more importantly why, starting with charts of various foreign indices.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Janos Gereben. This is very cool! DLH]

From: janosG <janosg@gmail.com>
Date: January 25, 2009 11:10:37 PM PST
Subject: Inauguration – the whole picture

<http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c>

doubleclick on detail to enlarge or use slider on the left

SCOTUS members look especially weird… and cold. ‘Twas 18 degrees with wind chill, so they are entitled. Obama, on the other hand, looks cool, not cold…:)

Yo-Yo Ma is taking pictures, sitting next to SF Boys/Girls Choruses (red hats).

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

From: janosG <janosg@gmail.com>
Date: January 25, 2009 7:44:38 PM PST
To: Janos Gereben <janosg@gmail.com>
Subject: Tragic prediction: no two-state solution, no peace possible

<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml>

Bob Simon has been spot on in his coverage for many years, last month predicting the end of the Gaza incursion almost to the day. This report is as validly pessimistic as anything I’ve seen.

<<Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state.

The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

It’s known as the “two-state” solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can’t have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea. <snip> >>

[A much happier news on "Sixty Minutes" is the illness-preventing, life-extending potential of red wine: <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/25/60minutes/main4752082.shtml>]

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

From: janosG <janosg@gmail.com>
Date: January 25, 2009 3:00:37 PM PST
Subject: Pondering ‘The Italian Job’ cliffhanger 40 years after the film

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/23/international/i081442S27.DTL>

Scientists solve `The Italian Job’ cliffhanger
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 23, 2009

Some of the Britain’s brightest minds have resolved one of the country’s biggest cinematic cliffhangers: How the robbers could have got away with the gold at the end of “The Italian Job.”

The 1969 heist film ends with the robbers’ gold-laden bus teetering over the edge of an Alpine road, with their loot — and their lives — in doubt.

On Friday the Royal Society of Chemistry offered fans a little closure, announcing the winner of a competition to find a scientific solution to their predicament.

“Like many people, I watched the film from when I was a young boy,” said John Godwin, the winner. “It’s one of those classic British films, with great actors — Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill — and a great car chase, and at the end of the day they’ve done all the hard work and it seemed a waste to leave them hanging on that mountainside.”

“The Italian Job” follows Charlie Croker, played by Caine, as he assembles a crack team of likable crooks to pull off a complex plan to steal a stash of gold in the Italian city of Turin. The ensuing car chase — which cuts across the rooftop test track of Fiat’s Lingotto building and down the steps of Turin’s Gran Madre di Dio church — ranks among the most gripping in movie history.

But things end badly when the gang’s getaway bus slides halfway off a mountain road on its way to Switzerland. The bus seesaws precariously, with the men gathered at the front and the gold weighing down the back, which is hanging over the cliff. A wrong move could send the bus tumbling into the chasm below, but Croker says: “Hang on a minute lads — I’ve got a great idea.” Then the credits roll.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH]

From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Date: January 25, 2009 8:48:15 PM PST
Subject: Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait

PROTOTYPE
Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait

By LESLIE BERLIN
January 25, 2009

IMAGINE a technology that lets you pay for products just by waving
your cellphone over a reader.

The technology exists, and, in fact, people in Japan have been using
it for the last five years to pay for everything from train tickets
to groceries to candy in vending machines. And in small-scale trials
around the world, including in Atlanta, New York and the San
Francisco Bay Area, nearly everyone has liked using this form of
payment.

But consumers in the United States won’t be able to wave and pay with
their cellphones anytime soon: The myriad companies that must work
together to give the technology to the masses have yet to agree on
how to split the resulting revenue.

…

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25proto.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>