Non Forbes

Transit agencies -- allow a discount for people who travel together for ordinary trips.

Submitted by brad on Tue, 2006-07-25 19:03

Transit is of course more efficient than private cars, many people on one vechicle. But because a round-trip for a couple or family involves buying 4 to 8 single tickets, couples and families who have cars will often take their cars unless parking is going to be a problem. For example, for us to go downtown it's $6 within SF. For people taking BART from Berkeley or Oakland it's $13.40 for 2 people. Makes it very tempting to take a car, even if it costs a similar amount (at 35 cents/mile, 15 of those for gasoline in a city) for the convenience and, outside of rush-hour, speed.

Topic: 
Transportation

No, senator Stevens was misquoted...

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2006-07-24 23:40

Everybody in the blogosphere has heard something about Alaska's Ted Stevens calling the internet a series of tubes.

They just heard him wrong. His porn filters got turned off and he discovered the internet was a series of pubes.

(And, BTW, I think we've been unfair to Stevens. While it wasn't high traffic that delayed his E-mail -- "an internet" -- a few days, his description wasn't really that bad... for a senator.)

Topic: 
Comedy
Internet

Switching to popular vote from electoral college

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2006-07-24 13:57

A proposal by a Stanford CS Prof for a means to switch the U.S. Presidential race from electoral college to popular vote is gaining some momentum. In short, the proposal calls for some group of states representing a majority of the electoral college to agree to an inter-state compact that they will vote their electoral votes according to the result of the popular vote.

Topic: 
Best Of Blog
New Democracy
Politics

Judge allows EFF's AT&T lawsuit to go forward

Submitted by brad on Thu, 2006-07-20 15:46

Big news today. Judge Walker has denied the motions -- particularly the one by the federal government -- to dismiss our case against AT&T for cooperative with the NSA on warrantless surveillance of phone traffic and records.

The federal government, including the heads of the major spy agencies, had filed a brief demanding the case be dismissed on "state secrets" grounds. This common law doctrine, which is often frighteningly successful, allows cases to be dismissed, even if they are of great merit, if following through would reveal state secrets.

Topic: 
Politics
Privacy
Internet

Paradox of abundance, with DVRs and Netflix/Peerflix

Submitted by brad on Wed, 2006-07-19 15:48

An interesting article in the WSJ yesterday on the paradox of abundance describes how many Netflix customers are putting many "highbrow" or "serious" movies on their lists, then letting them sit for months, unwatched, even returning them unwatched.

This sounds great for Netflix, of course, though it would be bad for Peerflix.

Topic: 
Media
Tags: 
peerflix

Burning Man 2005 Panoramas

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2006-07-17 00:48

Hot on the heels of the regular photos the gallery of 2005 Burning Man Panoramas is now up. This year, I got to borrow a cherry picker at sunset on Friday for some interesting perspectives. The long ones are around 3400 by 52000 at full res (180 megapixels) and even the ones on the web are larger than before. Use F11 to put your browser into full screen mode.

Topic: 
Photography
Burning Man
Tags: 
burning man

On the refutation of Metcalfe's law

Submitted by brad on Fri, 2006-07-14 13:32

Recently IEEE Spectrum published a paper on a refutation of Metcalfe's law -- an observation (not really a law) by Bob Metcalfe -- that the "value" of a network incrased with the square of the number of people/nodes on it. I was asked to be a referee for this paper, and while they addressed some of my comments, I don't think they addressed the principle one, so I am posting my comments here now.

Topic: 
Internet

How only Google can pull off pay-to-perform ads

Submitted by brad on Thu, 2006-07-13 19:58

Bruce Schneier today compliments Google on trying out pay-to-perform ads as a means around click-fraud, but worries that this is risky because you become a partner with the advertiser. If their product doesn't sell, you don't make money.

And that's a reasonable fear for any small site accepting pay-to-perform ads. If the product isn't very good, you aren't going to get a cut of much. Many affiliate programs really perform poorly for the site, though a few rare ones do well.

Topic: 
Internet

Remaining neutral on network neutrality -- it's the monopoly, stupid

Submitted by brad on Fri, 2006-07-07 17:35

People ask me about the EFF endorsing some of the network neutrality laws proposed in congress. I, and the EFF are big supporters of an open, neutral end-to-end network design. It's the right way to build the internet, and has given us much of what we have. So why haven't I endorsed coding it into law?

If you've followed closely, you've seen very different opinions from EFF board members. Dave Farber has been one of the biggest (non-business) opponents of the laws. Larry Lessig has been a major supporter. Both smart men with a good understanding of the issues.

I haven't supported the laws personally because I'm very wary of encoding rules of internet operation into law. Just about every other time we've seen this attempted, it's ended badly. And that's even without considering the telephone companies' tremendous experience and success in lobbying and manipulation of the law. They're much, much better at it than any of the other players involved, and their track record is to win. Not every time, but most of it. Remember the past neutrality rules that forced them to resell their copper to CLECs so their could be competition in the DSL space? That ended well, didn't it?

Read on...

Topic: 
Best Of Blog
Governance

PayPal should partner with UPS and other shippers

Submitted by brad on Thu, 2006-07-06 20:19

You've seen me write before of a proposal I call addresscrow to promote privacy when items are shipped to you. Today I'll propose something more modest, with non-privacy applications.

I would like PayPal, and other payment systems (Visa/MC/Google Checkout) to partner with the shipping companies such as UPS that ship the products bought with these payment systems.

Topic: 
Internet
Tags: 
eBay

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