That’s what everybody is using Google+ Hangout for, right?

Right now it’s stilll a little convoluted to make it work. When the Hangout loads you’ll get a screen asking permission for the app to run. Then it’ll most likely reload the Hangout. Then you’ll get a little drop down message by the address bar asking for permission again due to ‘insecure content’ (that’d be the images). Once you agree to all that then… possibly another reload of the screen… then click on the Apps button and then Recent  tab within the Google+ Hangout to see and use said custom app.

A bit of a pain in the ass to get there, but they’re still working out the kinks.

Uncanny.

Normally the number is blocked, but there was an error in the caller ID last time and I got their number.

Here it is: 651-829-3110

Have fun with it Internets. Give ‘em hell.

It’s easy.

It’s convenient.

It gets more engagement.

However, there’s always that elephant in the room that gets ignored. The content is being generated on a platform that could be locked down or taken away tomorrow. In other words, I don’t own it there. Same goes for Facebook, or Twitter or any other service.

Up to now trying to post something on a WordPress blog that is more complicated than a wall of text has been virtually impossible without accessing the web interface. Mobile apps, or even the email plug-ins just don’t work right.

So here’s hoping it doesn’t bite me in the ass later…

The fellow’s name was Matt and he had an opportunity for me.

I had recently posted my SUV for sale on Craigslist in the hopes of getting more money than the dealership would give me as a trade in. There had been no interest in it so far except for Matt.

His offer was simple. He had a list of people that were looking for a vehicle just like the one I was selling. All he needed was some more information. Then he could guarantee a sale, for a small fee.

After listening to the message, all my warning bells were going off. This smelled dirty. In fact, it gave me a vague sense I had run into this kind of thing before.

This is the nice thing about voicemail, it gives you time to assess and react, the last thing any conman wants. To the Googles I went, and oh the things I found.

Matt identified himself as being with Longwood Inc. A little sleuthing points to Longwood Industries which describes itself as:

“Longwood Industries Incorporated is a non-profit company established in 1972. We are an employer of disabled and non-disabled workers that provides rehabilitative services and offers products and services in numerous lines of business.”

Is it really? Anyone can post anything on the Internet. It certainly hits a number of hot buttons; charity, disabled persons, and helping people. Why it has to be good, right?

A link on the page takes you to their auto marketing systems.  it says:

“Are you selling a used vehicle? Auto Marketing Systems (AMS) is a division of Longwood Industries developed to help unite buyers and sellers of used vehicles.

Auto Marketing Systems receives hundreds of requests daily from buyers in the used car market. Our goal is to help satisfy the requests of these buyers through locating vehicles for them.”

So the scene is set. Now let’s see how people feel about them. A quick search of the Better Business Bureau site shows over 400 complaints. The BBB says the following about Longwood Industries:

“Longwood Industries is a 501(c)3 charity that does not solicit for donations; therefore, they have not been evaluated in relation to the BBB charity standards.

Through an agreement with Adventis, Inc., a commercial call center, Longwood Industries offers automobile Internet-Web Advertising under the name Auto Marketing Systems. Consumers report that after placing an ad in a newspaper or on the internet  to sell an automobile, they are contacted by Longwood Industries to place a similar ad on the internet. The firm offers a non-refundable ad for $149 or, a refundable ad for $249 of which $29 is non-refundable.

Customers must follow their cancellation policy exactly. The firm’s cancellation policy states that a vehicle photo must have been provided within 14 days of enrollment; the required cancellation form must be postmarked within two weeks after day 90 of enrollment and the cancellation form MUST be notarized. Fax, email and phone requests for cancellation will not be accepted. Consumers may wish to return the form certified for proof of receipt.”

Like Hotel California, you can check in, but you can’t leave (not without amazing acrobatic compliance).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Visit complaint sites like Complaints Board or Ripoff Report and you will find a litany of issues and complaints about the company.

People are being scammed.

In my case, Longwood Industries is blatantly violating Craigslist rules by soliciting posts on Craigslist without permission. They are actively hunting down people to try and con them out of money.

Again, this seemed so familiar and finally it hit me. This is just like the recruiting scams I ran into back in March of 2009.

Once again, in times of economic distress, it’s all too easy to get conned out of money in the hope of making money. It’s a sad fact that there are people out there ready to pounce on any opportunity to fuck somebody else over for a buck.

The only thing you can do is stay skeptical of it all, and make sure others know.

White space frequencies are important; they have driven forward innovations across numerous products and services. A few examples would be wireless microphones, ye old wireless house phones, baby monitors, bluetooth devices, the free wi-fi in coffee shops that millions enjoy, or that automatic car starter that heats up a car on a cold winter day. They are important because those spaces are unregulated – i.e. they aren’t restricted for use by any one individual or company. White space, at its most basic, is public.

In 2009, Congress passed the law that pushed analog television into the digital spectrum. It was a messy affair, but it had a bolder plan of adding large swathes of white space spectrum. The innovations that could take place here are huge, with the most utilitarian being hi-speed broadband piped into businesses and homes where it is not feasible or easy to lay physical lines. We’re talking about connecting people and industry to the world via the Internet, which in turn opens up vast possibilities that couldn’t previously exist.

Again, we’re talking about something that is a boon to both the public and industry.

Sounds almost too altruistic, right? Welcome to H.R. 1622: Spectrum Innovation Act.

If you know anything about how bills are named, then you understand their contents are the exact opposite. A more appropriate name should be: How We Can Fuck The Public By Selling Off And Exclusively Licensing White Space To Mobile Carriers.

It’s summary:

“Spectrum Innovation Act – Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to provide that, if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determines that it is consistent with the public interest in spectrum utilization for a licensee to voluntarily relinquish licensed spectrum usage rights to permit the assignment of new initial licenses subject to new service rules, the proceeds from granting such rights to another licensee under an appropriate competitive bidding system must be shared (subject to the FCC retaining certain offsets and deposits for specified program qualification and implementation costs), in an amount or percentage that the FCC considers appropriate, with the licensee who voluntarily relinquished such rights. Directs the FCC to establish rules for such voluntary incentive auction revenue sharing. Prohibits the FCC from reclaiming frequencies of broadcast television licensees directly or indirectly on an involuntary basis for certain licensing purposes.”

Grabbing the hacksaw, let’s cut this down to understandable parts.

“if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determines that it is consistent with the public interest in spectrum utilization for a licensee to voluntarily relinquish licensed spectrum usage rights to permit the assignment of new initial licenses subject to new service rules,”

Translation: FCC can take existing unlicensed white space spectrum or spectrum currently owned by broadcasters and allow it to be auctioned or awarded to a private company. Important point: the rules of usage on that white space will not be subject to existing standards.

What this means is private companies (read the guys with the most lobbyists) can have themselves awarded chunks of the airwaves to utilize and they get to make up the rules of how those airwaves can be used.

The major mobile phone carriers are expected to grab this spectrum quickly. They can then hold it in a basement as a hostage so that you have no option but to use their services. Moreover, the conventional wisdom is carriers will use this as the new backbone for Internet access; since they get to make the rules, they will have full control over content and speed without all that fuss of Net Neutrality that existing wired and wireless spectrum has to deal with.

Pretty fucked up right? Wait, it gets better!

“Prohibits the FCC from reclaiming frequencies of broadcast television licensees directly or indirectly on an involuntary basis for certain licensing purposes.”

This is a giant one finger salute from the broadcasting industry which is still fuming over the digital push of 2009. In this instance the FCC will lose any power to reallocate spectrum to white space. If this rule had been in place before 2009, the industry would still be sitting in its own analog pile of shit, refusing to move forward from a tech perspective. Now they are ensuring no one has the power to do that ever again.

This bill is written, from start to finish, with pure corporate interests in mind. There is no innovation to be found here. There is no public interest to be found here either. This is not something that makes life better, nor does it open up compelling future possibilities.

This is pure, unadulterated, ass-fuckery that further narrows the field to only those that have a few hundred million or billion to drop on licensed wireless spectrum. Enjoy your AT&T and Verizon mobile overlords (soon to be the only players left) and be sure to thank to Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) for pushing this bill out there for them.

There was still a great return on our investment, despite it not being the best investment.

The payloads it delivered to space: the Hubble, the ISS, and numerous other satellites and science experiments have greatly improved our understanding of the universe and how we can interact with it. Every launch I watched felt magical, like we could achieve more than the daily bullshit and grind on this planet.

Here’s a collection of all the missions in one glorious video.

Ragnar Tørnquist, the lead developer lamented:
“I also think that the Western world has lost the sense of religious mystery too. People knew there was something bigger, but they didn’t question it. Now we question everything, and everything has been reduced to facts or data.”

Cue needle scratching on record.

What?

This quote exemplifies muddled thinking. Moreover, that this phrase was uttered, as if in resignation that people bothered to question how stuff works, boggles the damn mind.

Show me a time in human history when, even under the threat of death, that people haven’t questioned things.

As for the whining that everything has been reduced to facts or data: Ragnar, perhaps you missed the part where the computers and Internet upon which you make your money is the direct result of questioning, of facts, and data. Has that reduced the awe behind computing? Has that, in turn, failed to produce even more wonders and mysteries to be explored?

Questioning everything and reducing it to facts and data is what allows us to build bigger and better things like the Hubble telescope which captures those amazing deep field shots. Look at that image and tell me there isn’t more mystery to be found there than in any millennia-old story that could scribbled down and passed off as religion. In all those stars and galaxies we’re looking at billions of possibilities.

A plague of locusts pales before the devastating power of a supernova. The ability to measure galaxies and send probes into the heliosphere takes us places never before imagined by people who considered themselves separated from the cosmos by a luminiferous ether.

In short, purposely not questioning something in order to retain some sort of mystery is downright the most asinine thing I’ve heard this week.

Cedar Waxwing

Kingbird

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Baltimore Oriole

Kingfisher

Rough-winged Swallow

Also, if you ever get to Ithaca, you must, by any means necessary, go see Lucifer Falls. It is out of this world.

This network needed to be robust, able to withstand a nuclear attack. It needed to be self-healing, and route information around roadblocks. This was the 1960s.

DARPA and various universities went to work on this problem over the next 30 years.

In the 1990’s the World Wide Web, the side of the Internet that most people have their daily experience with came into existence. A team at the European Center for Particle Research (CERN) in Switzerland developed a set of protocols that formed the foundation for how we view and exchange information on a daily basis via the Internet.

It was also during this time in the 1990’s that Linus Torvalds (father of Linux) penned the words that were eerily prescient on what happened this week:

“The explosion of capitalist conservatism, combined with a growing awareness of Internet’s business value, has led to major changes in the Internet community. Many of them have not been for the good. “

One must understand the Internet’s deep roots, nourished and grown by science and academia to fully appreciate the impact of the latest decision made by Wisconsin’s legislature.

The Internet is not Comcast, it’s not Verizon, it’s not AT&T. It’s not the local telcos and service providers. They are, at best, access points to the Internet, and at worst jailors of the Internet. They found there was money to be made in portioning off the US like a cow carcass and carving off choice slices as their own in the form of municipal monopolies where they laid their copper, fiber, and cables that serve as those access points for users. It also allows them to control the content that comes over wires – but that’s another rant.

That leads us to Wisconsin University which participates with a non-profit organization called WiscNet. The Chronicle says:

“WiscNet, a nonprofit network cooperative that services the public universities, most of the technical and private colleges in Wisconsin, about 75 percent of the state’s elementary and high schools, and 95 percent of its public libraries, according to David F. Giroux, a spokesman for the university system.”

Furthermore, the university of Wisconsin was awarded “$39-million in federal grants, they were awarded to two efforts: one involving the flagship campus, and another through the University of Wisconsin-Extension. The money is to expand broadband connections for health-care providers, public-safety agencies, community organizations, and schools, among other projects. “

WiscNet is involved in a project that:

“would lay about 600 miles of fiber-optic cable across the state.”

Right now fiber is the choicest connection you could ask for, something the US sorely lacks, and something private telecommunication companies have been dragging their feet for decades now to install despite billions in tax breaks that were awarded to them to do such.

Wow, so Wisnet sounds like something great!

Of course, if this non-profit is getting millions in funding, that means somebody else isn’t.

Enter in Wisconsin lawmakers who in:

“A budget approved by a legislative committee last week would force the University of Wisconsin to return $39-million in federal grants awarded to expand high-speed Internet access across the state, state education officials said. The plan would also require all University of Wisconsin institutions to withdraw from WiscNet… The surprise changes were included among a series of amendments to a bill containing the university system’s 2011-13 budget. “

These changes weren’t even discussed beforehand. There was no debate with those that use the service on potential impacts. There was no actual study of what was actually better for all involved.

Why?

“Republican lawmakers told the Wisconsin State Journal that the university should not be in the telecommunications business. “

And there lays the crux of the issue.

Corporations have put in the fix. Future endowments will go to them. In the meantime they control the landscape. And this just doesn’t happen in Wisconsin, this happens all over the US.

When people rise up and get sick of the frayed infrastructure telecommunication companies have left behind them and institute municipal (read government) solutions suddenly they get blocked, sued, or permanently delayed by said telecommunication companies.

It’s a fucking scam – but wait it gets worse!

“Another provision in the plan would bar any University of Wisconsin campus from participating in advanced networks connecting research institutions worldwide, according to Mr. Evers’s memo. For example, the Madison campus would have to withdraw from Internet2, a high-speed networking consortium”

And here we have gone beyond the pale. The Internet2

“ is an advanced networking consortium led by the U.S. research and education community. A revolutionary-class IP and optical network. Advanced technologies that enable services and achievements beyond the scope of individual institutions. An unparalleled human network to make sure these technologies get spread around where they can do some good. That’s us, but that’s just the beginning. “

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Internet2 is aimed at taking the huge strides in information sharing and collective intelligence that has been spread by the phenomenon known as the Internet and creating yet another academic revolution. It’s about making us, as people, collectively smarter, more connected, and ultimately better human beings. It’s the technology that will deliver that information.

And lawmakers in Wisconsin cut it off.

Why? Because the Wisconsin legislature have decreed it’s telecommunications related. Translation: “Our political coffers were filled by telecommunication companies and now we must deliver to them.”

And we, not the corporations or the politicians, get fucked over for it.

Remember this the next time a libertarian says the free market solves all problems and corporations would act in our best interest.

Remember this the next time a politician says… well… anything.