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The History of the Bat Suit
Author Archives: Hamish MacEwan
Selling Our Wireless Future
As a revenue source, spectrum auctions are a particularly pernicious tax on wireless innovation. They pick the wrong technology for wireless infrastructure by regulatory fiat, and strengthen the market dominance of already-dominant players. The costs of this policy to innovation and growth greatly outweigh its revenue benefits.
These auctions may lock in an outdated regulatory paradigm, strengthen the dominant mobile broadband carriers, and block the path for some of the most innovative wireless technologies that could improve mobile broadband speed and reduce its price over the next decade
The proposed spectrum auctions are being promoted under the false premise that boosting mobile broadband, smart grid communications, inventory management systems, mobile payments, and health monitoring requires auctioning exclusive pieces of licensed spectrum. In reality, these markets are fast developing through unlicensed wireless applications, like WiFi.
These dynamic markets are telling us something new: The future of wireless will likely be mostly unlicensed, with an important, but residual role of auctioned, licensed services. And yet the drive to auctions simply ignores the evidence from actual markets in favor of an outmoded regulatory ideal that is the opposite of what cutting edge radio engineering and dynamic markets show.
Sound familiar?
To me it sounds very like the dominant incumbent exclusivity regime being chosen over the developing innovative, chaotic, anarchic, and successful models. That sounds like the copyright struggle to me.
If you haven’t, read this. He puts it so much better.
Poisoning DNS perhaps a bad idea – Operations and other mysteries
The caf?????s upstream ISP is ???Optus???, one of the major Australian carriers. To my astonishment I found that Optus???s DNS servers are interfering with Google searches, stealing their DNS lookups and serving results pages on their own (shitty quality) branded search instead! Try
https:? No connection; and Google+ wouldn???t load either.Obviously as soon as realized what???s going on I immediately changed DNS servers to something reliable. Before I did I found a tiny ???about this page??? link at the bottom of the heinous Optus search results page, where I was told how great this was for me, but how I could opt out of their ???default??? search engine if I wanted to but was warned this was an ???advanced setting???.
Seriously, what do Optus think they???re doing? From a commercial standpoint, do they really think that their captive audience matters to anyone advertising on the web? Of course not, but in the mean time they???re certainly going to alienate customers who just maybe actually do want to use (in this case) Google sites.
There???s a bigger issue, though. Unaltered answers to DNS queries is a backbone of net neutrality. That???s our problem, but once carriers start poisoning nameservers in their own favour it will be but a blink before everyone is doing it to each other and lookups will become worthless. While I???m sure the morons in Marketing who thought that sabotaging DNS queries would be a good idea won???t be worried about the wreckage that will cause for everyone else, such a war wouldn???t be good for any of the companies involved, either. And meanwhile, if they really want everyone to learn how to install an app to ???fix??? the internet???
Corruption is everywhere.
File-Sharing Darling Dan Bull Publishes Anti-SOPA Rap
???As an internet geek, a musician, and a non-evil person, SOPA is abhorrent on several fronts,??? Dan told TorrentFreak. ???It threatens the future of the internet, which is something far more valuable both commercially and socially than the entertainment industry ever has been, or ever will be.???
Dan recognizes that everything we do is influenced by something else, and richer cultural landscapes can be achieved through remixes, mashups and sharing.
???Creativity is all about interpreting and re-imagining what you see and hear around you. The idea that creativity exists in some kind of vacuum, and that you???re not a real artist unless you can make something ???completely original??? is not only stupid, it contradicts the most fundamental axioms of how the universe works,??? he adds.
???Thirdly, the internet is an amazing new forum for free speech and holding those in power to account. The idea that governments and even private corporations can police the internet and decide what people on a global scale are allowed to say and hear is tyrannical.???
via torrentfreak.com
My Mother Wants An iPhone
If you think about it, the entire entertainment business is about not playing, about trying to keep the customer in the dark, back in the twentieth century.
But when even eighty five year olds need the latest gadget you know that philosophy is doomed.
You may think CDs are better than MP3s. That a physical book is better than a Kindle.
But try telling that to the people in my mom???s building. They???re completely wired and up to date. They want what we???ve got. And it puts a smile upon my face.
via lefsetz.com
Zeno???s Advent Calendar ?? Feminist Philosophers
The Long Life of the Vampire Squid
a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
You didn’t recognise Goldman Sachs immediately?
Deleting Music: Not content to merely delete their own catalogue???
Both Warner Music and Sony Music Entertainment have asserted copyright ownership of things they do not have any claim to, and have gone about removing it, taking away public access to it, and attempting to profit from it through advertising revenue where it is available.
This is not an administrative oversight. This is a business strategy. They’re not just deleting their own music through neglect – they’re actively seeking and destroying everyone else’s wherever they think they can get away with it.
Some how the infringement by beneficiaries seems more odious, particularly when they are the boosters for more draconian enforcement for the rest of us.
Deleting Music: Copyright extension is anti-music
this decision is not made for the benefit of songwriters, composers, audiences, music researchers or for the benefit of culture.
It is a profoundly anti-music decision.
Worse, the Musicians Union ??? a body purporting to represent the interests of their members ??? have decided to side with the BPI in their support of this copyright extension, confirming their status as pro-popstar, pro-corporate entertainment complex and pro-copyright maximisation??? but utterly anti-music, and anti-musician.
I know some good people in the MU, and I can think of good reasons to be a member. But at a public policy level, the Musicians Union has become complicit in some of the worst decisions and campaigns that are not to the benefit of their members at all, but solely for the good of the corporate record industry.
I don???t think they have been fooled by BPI rhetoric. I don???t think they???re stupid. I didn???t say ???deluded??? ??? I said ???complicit???.
FTC Fines Santa Claus for Violating Children’s Privacy
Mr. Claus has flagrantly violated children’s privacy, collecting their consumer preferences for toys and also tracking their behavior so as to judge and maintain a data base of naughtiness and niceness,” Leibowitz said. “Worse, he has tied this data to personally identifiable information, including any child’s name, address, and age. He has solicited this information online, in some cases passing data to third parties so they may fulfill children’s wishes. According to unconfirmed reports, he has gone so far as to invade children’s homes in the dead of night. He has done this on a broad scale, unchallenged by government authorities for too long.
True, true dat.
Hamish MacEwan 