Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

  I'm delighted to read of Dewayne's comments reaching this audience;
he's always had lots of interesting things to say and making sure the
world knows about them is a Good Thing.   He told us about the Indian
reservations work a few years ago at Asilomar, but obviously there's
been more since then -- wish I could have heard him live!
  

    
gotta say, I think next year we need to explain to the corp sponsors that
the network is needed until the cdonference ends, and maybe a few hours
aftewards!

(in the press room now where there is dial-up, during a very boring panel on
subpoenas and mjessage board cases)

wg
  

    
Re experimenting with wireless on Okinawa, I wonder if the Japanese
government is interested in that because of the big-ass U.S. military base
there?  :-)
  

    
Thanks for the reports, everyone, they are really helpful.

If there is one thing I've learned from Dave Hughes, it's the value of
spread-spectrum telecom as a "disruptive" technology in a positive sense.
Kennard and Powell are both prisoners of the old scarcity mentality, but
in varying directions.  Powell seems content, as do many schooled in
the now fortunately waning "law and economics" era of the last decade,
to jettison "spectrum (mis)managament" because it is hard and messy.
But complete deregulation is a fiction; what we have learned from energy
"deregulation" is that it is a cover for a game-of-position among large
economic players to run competition off the road, raise entry barriers
to newcomers (both in terms of players and technology), and undermine
the essentially leveling economics of new technological systems.

Oh wait, we learned that first from telecom dereg, didn't we?

Same as it ever was.

Not to say that modernizing regulation is not a high priority.
But as a longtime holder of an FCC-issued spectrum license (my ham radio
Extra Class, which I let lapse quite a while ago), I have come to realize
that there is an positive tension between the impact of new technology
and the observation that "good fences make good neighbors."  

As for Ashcroft and the "Patriot Act", I would have to say my early-October
visit to Congress to lobby on that was one of the most shocking things 
I have ever lived through.  And I say that as a self-confessed political
hack who is hard-as-nails unsentimental about how the legislative process
generally works.
  

    
<bruces> addressed Ashcroft in his rousing closing rant... pretty
hilariously.
  

    

I would love to have heard that!
  

    

please post more, specially about the closing rant.  Enjoying all the
reports.
  

    
Looking forward to extended summaries?
  

    
Last night there were two extensive parties, one at Kevin Poulsen and Lauren
Graham's house, and the other at Gilmore's Toad Hall.  I doubt anyone will
be posting anything for a while.

wg
  

    

Lauren Gelman, not Lauren Graham.
  

    

Did you go to either or both ?
  

    
yuu know, I could have sworn I typed gelman.  I certainly was thinking it.

wg
  

    

Whew. Rested today and read Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist, catching me up
with two years back in my timely novel reading.  (It's funny, a strange 
mix of retro (so 1999) and light-shedding after 9.11.02, the real 
start of the millenium.)  I should read people's stuff BEFORE cfp, but 
the conference itself is a major reading motivator.  Besides, I must
recuperate, and novels are always best in one long lazy stint.

I have notes from some other sessions to process a bit, and I want to read
the rest of the proceedings, too.  They gave us a disk, and I think all or
many of the articles are on the web site, too. Hmm, I did read the fiction 
first, not just because the cover art was more vivid.  It's also a
comforting size, on good old wireless paper pages.  
  

    
I read the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer book on the plane home (along with half-
napping and listening to mp3s). There's a lot of good stuff in there.

I'm whacked. It's good to be home (and may family *especially* thinks so).
More later on.
  

    

I'm still in SF. Mainly just resting after an exhausting conference.
  

    

Same here, though I had to go down to Palo Alto to speak at Stanford
yesterday. Leaving for the airport soon.

I've started to up up photos from the conference. Here's one of 
the inimitable <bruces> after his speech (which was, as you can see,
really written in longhand):
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-22/bruce-sterling.html

And Phil Z:
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-22/phil-zimmermann.html
  

    
By the way, are you all as impressed with Fred von Lohmann as I am?
He was great at my friend Bram's CodeCon conference last month, on a
panel with Phil Zimmerman and John Callas.  His P2P copyright paper is here:

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/Napster/20010227_p2p_copyright_white_paper.html
  

    
He looks like the guy who ought to be cast as Hiro Protagonist, if they ever
get around to making "Snow Crash."
  

    <hidden>
  

    

Here's a pic of Kajol Devgan:

<http://www.indianceleb.com/kajol/>.
  

    

And here's a Kajol Devgan gallery:

<http://www.morningindia.com/BWood/fpic4.asp>.
  

    

Now I went to google too, to confirm my guess that Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
was a film reference (it's a title, yep!) and enjoyed a couple of reviews of
that film (evidently not seen as a great one, but Kajol's comedic talent is
praised in this one:
http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/KabhiKhushiKabhieGham/
and the title means "Then Now and Forever"
  

    

The decapitation portion of Bruce's speech is a statement of something I
hadn't seem laid out so clearly before.
  

    
Google hits for Bollywood mafia Dubai: 191

Here's one:

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/05/24/FFXPO5HE3NC.html


Although I don't agree with everything Bruce says, I must say his 
general strategy of responding to travesty with ridicule is a good one.
As Lewis Lapham predicted in the summer of 2000, the Bush administration
is a restoration monarchy (borne out and then some by the reappearance
of an entire fleet of Reagan and Bush 41 functionaries, including Cheney,
Powell, Wolfowitz, Ted Olson, Otto Reich, the unspeakable Poindexter,
James Cason, and so many others; not to mention the White House welfare
program for unemployed Republican politicians like Abraham, Whitman,
Racicot and of course Mr. Attorney General himself).

But restorations never work.
  

    

I hid post 144 because it was 755 lines long.  In Pico, type o 144 at the 
respond prompt to see it.  In Engaged, click the link.

All of the subsequent posts up until this one, are referring to items in 
Bruce's speech.

It's a wonderful speech.  I highly recommend reading all 755 lines of it.  
With your browser open as you do.