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

From: Randall <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: July 29, 2009 2:11:39 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns

On Jul 29, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Dewayne Hendricks wrote:

World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warnsNew estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics

The only thing that will “silence global warming skeptics” is Exxon/Mobil, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell running out of money to pay for them.

WiFi takes a seat at the cellular table

By mdano
Created Jul 24 2009 – 4:35pm
<http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/wifi-takes-seat-cellular-table/2009-07-24>

[Note: This comment comes from friend Bob Frankston. DLH]

From: “Bob Frankston” <BobF@Frankston.com>
Date: July 29, 2009 1:48:26 PM PDT
To: “‘Dewayne Hendricks’” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: RE: [Dewayne-Net] Spectrum Policy in the Age of Broadband

Need I repeat <http://frankston.com/?name=SpectrumDirt> — the very idea of
creating all this myriad special little hacks is the source of the problem,
not the solution. And, again, this fixation on speed everywhere and coverage
nowhere is, well, tragic.

But maybe we’ll be lucky and be able find a new mother lode of spectrum
buried deep in the badlands. We might find enough pounds of spectrum to last
us hundreds of microseconds. OK, OK, affect doesn’t carry in email so I
better not try to make such jokes lest people get out the pickaxes and go
looking for all the buried spectrum.

[Note: This item comes from friend David Isenberg. DLH]

From: “David S. Isenberg (isen)” <isen@isen.com>
Date: July 29, 2009 12:24:54 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: schiller lecture, worth watching

“Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism” <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RrKScRg5KM>

David I

Company Claims Patent On Pretty Much All Podcasting

from the this-ought-to-be-fun dept
<http://techdirt.com/articles/20090729/1129435699.shtml>

VoloMedia, an online ad tools company, is gleefully declaring that it has been awarded a patent on podcasting. The specific patent, 7,568,213, is for a “Method for providing episodic media content.” Not surprisingly, it’s a continuation patent (sometimes referred to as a submarine patent) where the claims are changed over time to keep current with what’s happening in the market. The patent itself is short, with the main claim being:

A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.

[snip]

SPECTRUM POLICY IN THE AGE OF BROADBAND

The convergence of wireless telecommunications technology and Internet protocols is fostering new generations of mobile technologies. This transformation has created new demands for advanced communications infrastructure and radio frequency spectrum capacity that can support high-speed, content-rich uses. Furthermore, a number of services, in addition to consumer and business communications, rely at least in part on wireless links to broadband backbones. Wireless technologies support public safety communications, sensors, medicine and public health, intelligent transportation systems, electrical utility smart grids, and many other vital communications. Existing policies for allocating and assigning spectrum rights may not be sufficient to meet the future needs of wireless broadband and national broadband policy. A challenge for Congress is to provide decisive policies in an environment where there are many choices but little consensus.

<http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40674_20090713.pdf>

Courtesy of the Benton Foundation <http://www.benton.org>
RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns

New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics
Duncan Clark
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 July 2009 15.39 BST
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/27/world-warming-faster-study>

The world faces record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a study.
The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. But new research firmly rejects that argument.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity and the El Niño southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.

The analysis shows the relative stability in global temperatures in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lean and Rind’s research also sheds light on the extreme average temperature in 1998. The paper confirms that the temperature spike that year was caused primarily by a very strong El Niño episode. A future episode could be expected to create a spike of equivalent magnitude on top of an even higher baseline, thus shattering the 1998 record.

[snip]

July 26, 2009

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
By JOHN MARKOFF
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.

They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?

The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.

A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.

[snip]

Group will push open source in US government

by Grant Gross, IDG News Service
<http://www.macworld.com/article/141861/2009/07/opensource.html?lsrc=rss_main>
Open-source software needs a higher profile in Washington, D.C., according to a group of about 70 organizations and companies that launched a new campaign to educate U.S. government agencies about the benefits of open source.

Members of the Open Source For America coalition, which launched Wednesday, include Google, The Linux Foundation, the Mozilla and Debian projects, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The coalition’s goal is not to convince the U.S. government to favor open-source software over proprietary code, but to give open source an equal chance to win government contracts, said Tom Rabon, executive vice president for corporate affairs at Red Hat. In recent years, some open-source groups, particularly outside the U.S., have pushed governments to mandate open-source software instead of using software from U.S.-based Microsoft.

That’s not the approach from OSFA, Rabon said. “We just want make sure that our government is taking advantage of every opportunity,” he said. ”To the extent that we can make them more aware of not being locked into a particular technology and the collaboration aspects of open source, these are the types of things that just take time for them to understand.”

Microsoft is not part of the coalition. A Microsoft spokesman referred questions about the company’s reaction to the coalition to a blog post last week by Teresa Carlson, Microsoft’s public sector federal lead, who questioned often-cited benefits of open-source software.

[snip]

FCC SEEKS COMMENT ON ACCESS TO BROADBAND DATA

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment on how to interpret and implement sections 106(h)(1) and 106(h)(2) of the Broadband Data Improvement Act (BDIA). Since 2000, the Commission has collected basic service information from broadband service providers using Form 477. In 2008, the Commission adopted revisions to the Form 477, which would result in the collection of more detailed and granular data. At the same time, the Commission issued a further notice of proposed rulemaking, which, among other things, sought comment on the issue of how to provide Form 477 information to other broadband initiatives, including those undertaken by state agencies and public-private partnerships, and on how to preserve confidentiality when sharing the information collected on Form 477. Comments due Seven days after publication in the Federal Register; Reply Comments are due Twelve days after publication in the Federal Register. Contact: Jeremy Miller at (202) 418-0940

<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-1550A1.doc>

Courtesy of the Benton Foundation <http://www.benton.org>