Fair Use News & Views

It’s surprisingly uncrowded. The Raging Grannies are here along with a few other side shows.

Just talked with John Markoff from the NYTimes as well as the SFChronicle reporter and a couple of panelists

Dean of Stanford Law School

It is interesting that the FCC invited Comcast, Verizon, and Pando networks to appear at the session and they all declined. To me that means that they oppose neutrality in spite of any PR to the contrary.

Larry Lessig is speaking. Ah now we have content. You won’t be surprised to learn that his Power Point is another of his trademarked turbo-text presentations.

Larry’s message is simple. Don’t let the providers change the network unless they can prove it will harm no one. The FCC has failed in its policy. They have let Comcast and others change the network to the damage of the consumer. — extreme laughter from audience and squirming from the table of FCC technotards!

As it turns out the ENTIRE FCC commission is here. Rather than a fuzzy photo from me you can see their website photo.

Jason Devitt CEO, Skydeck

Gave a wonderfully cogent argument for the need for neutrality on wireless networks as well.  The comparison be the openness of your laptop and cellphone are laughable.  He predicts that when laptops have 3G modems built it will become common practice to be harassed on setup to signup with a cell provider for 3G.  Why? Because the commision on a new signup will exceed the profit on the manufacturing of the laptop.

I’m attending the RSA conference. They are outdoing themselves this year in the category of stupidity. Yesterday I found that my $100 Expo pass does NOT include wireless access. The explanation was that the Moscone Center does not have enough bandwidth to support the 18k attendees. So how does OracleWorld provide open WiFi for 40k+ attendees? I also learned that they had 15+ meetings on the subject and ended up with a per attendee username/password solution for the PEAP access that needs about 10 people to administer.

Then there is the Al Gore Keynote. They are paying him $100k for the speech. Did he invent encryption as well as the Internet?

Tuesday Update

Expo badge holders can attend “All” keynotes unless they are on Tuesday.   But they can watch the live streaming of them, even if they are half empty.  I suspect this is because of the talk by Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff.  It’s hard to believe he has anything more to say about cybersecurity than his predecessor Tom Ridge.    Several years ago I heard Ridge give a detailed, but incoherent presentation at a tech symposium on “interoperability” of emergency systems.   — turns out he was talking about firehoses.

I also watched the security copy turn away vendors with badges that said “vendor” because they didn’t have a vendor badgeholder.  Following the rules!

Tune in tomorrow for more.

Microsoft is turning up the heat in it’s quest to become MicroWho?  While their bluster is amusing, the Yahoo response is between comical and pathetic.  Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock insist that Yahoo is worth more than Microsoft has offered because they say it is.  The stock market doesn’t agree and neither will the shareholders.  This is like having George Bush and Dick Cheney running your company.  — things are going great everywhere because I say they are.

There must be a country somewhere that would like to have them run it for them.  (Yang and Bostock not Bush and Cheney)

Bluffing never works when everyone knows what’s in your hand.  Your move Roy.