Posted on by mwhybark

Kleer

Fellow TidBITS contributor (ok, ok, I overstate my contribution) Glenn Fleishmann takes a hardnosed look at the enticing possibility of the unwired ISP Clearwire in the Seattle market. I’m at the thin, frayed end of DSL and really can’t consider cable, as I host in-house, a practice both technically and TOSly unadvisable under cable. Their outbound speed may be weak, but it would be hard to get weaker then that which I currently pay for on not one but TWO DSL lines.

Sadly, Glenn neglects to examine the Clearwire TOS. Personally, as Clearwire has sprung from the loins of cellular visionary Craig McCaw (did i get that right? I suck at the whole capitalist sycophancy thing. I’m working on it, OK?) I do not expect the TOS to actively permit any sort of publicly-oriented upstream content delivery, or if it they do, the TOS will include a sufferance clause permitting the proprietor to choke any commercial or political discourse that troubles the business model at whim.

Clearwire’s tech model is still a bit kludgy; to get online, you must plug the company-provided modem/router/hub into a power supply and thence the modem/router is treated as a conventional wireless-capable DSL or cable modem. That’s surely parity in terms of user experience; yet what I desire is truly mobile hi-speed access to my private IP space. I wish to sit in a park, car, ship or plane with any given terminal, my laptop or my father-in-law’s gateway, authenticate, and work securely within my IP space. Given that my dear Pipo lives in a part of the country that is far from Clearwire’s coverage area and lacks a PC that supports any sort of wireless networking, I understand that this is a a set of featuredemands that must be seen as unrealistic. But there is a subset of them which is clearly possible.

The only features in these scenarios I have not yet actually experienced in real life with nothing fancier than conventional 80211.b hardware and 256k ethernet is easy and secure administrative access to my IP space and high-caliber upstream speeds. But because upstream broadband has failed to offer any speed improvement to the majority of postential customers, competition in the low end of the market has been purely price-based, and therefore 256k wireless or wired networking is essentially free with any given set of computers.

The competitive key to beating cable or DSL, then, is fat outbound pipes. Come to me with an unrestricted hosting plan that gives me upstream of as little as 1k, and you have my $60 a month, money i am already spending for two separate DSL lines with a choke of 256k on each. The trick? The provide must eschew content and activity controls, precisely as a phone provider does.

I won’t hold my breath – there are technical hurdles for all three bandwidth-provisioning strategies that limit upstream bandwidth; content managers are for the moment highly engaged in a fight to limit the market; and of course, if you’re already filthy rich, the laws simply do not apply.

Still, I’d think that $60 per month across a 20% of the extant market might well be enough dough to attract a would-be Medici or Borgia to the sinking island. The question would then be rather simpler: Shall I dine at the table of the Borgia?

Posted on by mwhybark

Bedbugs!

The ever-interesting Maciej notes his new-minted Bedbug Registry, a central – and public – clearinghouse for reports of bedbug infestations. Wonder if they have any mechanism in place to deal with malicious reports?

Posted on by mwhybark

Zirkonium Crawl

Attention Hillians:

Orkestar Zirkonium: Capitol Hill Pub Crawl

Sat, November 18, 2006

9:00 pm, FREE!

Cal Anderson Park and down the Pike/Pine corridor

Seattle, WA

Come drink and dance away the winter cold and the sorrows of this world–meet in Cal Anderson Park at the fountain at 9 pm to join a roving, barhopping street party with purveyors of Balkan-brass fun Orkestar Zirkonium! Warm clothes are recommended; formal wear is much appreciated.

Posted on by mwhybark

Dig the Debt

Jon Konrath airs an amusing idea concerning debt management:

Imagine that every time you buy something on your credit card, the name/date/details are put in a last-in/first-out queue. Each month, when you make a payment, your statement shows that month’s finance charge you paid off, and then shows all of the items at the top of the queue that were “removed” by this payment. So like if you had a Visa that was full of crap from the last ten years, and you were feverishly paying off the balance, you might get a statement that said something like “you paid this month’s 68.11 finance charge, plus you paid off a pair of movie tickets from 1998, and a bunch of books you bought at Barnes and Noble from back then.”

He has more to say on the topic, mind you. But what a great idea!

Posted on by mwhybark

Old Soldiers' Home

Many years ago, at least twice and possibly more, my parents took my sister and me to visit with the aged residents of what was then the Indiana State Soldiers’ Home and which today is known as the Indiana Veterans’ Home. The building seen in the first link is the one I recall. We sat on the expansive porch and visited, in our five-or-six-year-old-way with some elderly men. I recall one by vision, a very elderly man who could well have been a veteran of an 19th-century war, his white hair thin and I think his dentures out, swaddled in a lap blanket.

I recall the porch generously overlooking the frequently-flooding Wabash through the boughs of overhanging trees, willows and the like. The historical archive site notes that the Home was located off Riverside Road, so it seems likely that’s true. Google Maps clearly shows the Wabash running by the foot of the Home, so my thirty-four-year-old brain chemistry appears to be intact.

Anyway, this is one of the many experiences my parents provided to me that I am deeply grateful for. I wish that this had been an annual tradition instead of a one-or-two year detour. My family has absolutely no tradition of military service, but for what appears to be an entire generation lost (and lost to memory) during the Civil War in Missouri. I do think that my own profound suspicion of war and interest in and even reverence of service must reflect my family’s heritage. I may be a bright man, but I am neither an original thinker nor a genius. War is bad; service is not. I have never shied from expressing my concerns to friends who enlist; I have never shied from expressing my support and concern for those in I know in combat zones and on this day I regularly think of them as well as that old man, and the young men he left behind or killed on the fields of Cuba, the Philippines, France, Germany, Korea, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Iraq.

Rarely to do I concur with the judgments of the callous and evil men who send you to do their will and I honor and respect them not at all, even when I concur with their judgments. I honor and respect your service and I always will.