Gaige's Pages

When I was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign", I took a large number of economics courses, spanning everything from macro and micro to 300-level ag. ec. courses.

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p> Perhaps our current President needs to pay some attention to my professors' claims that "free trade benefits everyone."

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p>Unfortunately, he had to learn this the hard way. As shown in this article at the Financial Times, the users of the steel which is being tariffed by Mr. Bush are now complaining that they are becoming less competitive and thus dropping jobs. Estimates are that this set of tariffs, added last year to save jobs in the U.S. steel industry, has cost the production industries almost 200,000 jobs.

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p> My professors would be shaking their heads right about now...

According to the BBC, some recent political debate over Sexual Offences laws in the UK have been censored because of new anti-spam software that has been installed in systems at the Parliment there.

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p> The article raises concern over whether the new system is diverting otherwise-approrpiate email because it may contain words related to sex and sexual practices.

PC Magazine has an article comparing the two common high-speed desktop buses, USB 2.0 and Firewire.

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p> Not surprising, they found that USB 2.0 seldom lives up to the 480Mbps that it advertises and that Firewire is better for use with consumer electronics devices.

In the ever-growing world of open source projects that are just wrong... comes iPod Linux, a microLinux port to the iPod.

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p>Aparently, they now have it booting and playing sound...

An article at Silicon Valley.com includes a good-sized list of evidence for prior art against the frame and link patents that SBC has filed.

The long-rumored demise of dial-up internet may well be underway. According to an article in the New York Times, the big three ISPs (AOL, EarthLink, and MSN) are all reporting slowing subscriber growth or loss of subscribers in the most recent reporting periods. Meanwhile, broadband operators are seeing increases in subscribers. The article believes these are intrinsically linked.

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p> Left out are subscriber numbers for United Online which provides considerably less expensive nationwide access than the three major competitors, and local ISPs that tend to offer services in areas not otherwise served by regional or national ISPs.

CNet is reporting that the Pentagon and WiFi technology companies have reached an agreement intended to protect military radar frequencies while expanding the availability of WiFi.

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p>This agreement will dovetail into the proposed additions to the 5GHz spectrum.

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p>Those familiar with the spectrum will note that the 5GHz spectrum (used by 802.11a) is more prone to wall-penetration problems and other interferance than the 2.4GHz spectrum used by the 802.11b (and g) standards.

After the tragedy involving the Space Shuttle Columbia on Saturday, NASA has begun an investigation into the incident.

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p> As a sign of the times, they are taking advantage of the internet and digital photography, audio and video to quickly accept evidence from the public.

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p> On their Shuttle Columbia page there is a link to an FTP site and full instructions on how to upload digital media and commentary in the event that you have captured something that could be of interest.

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In this morning's L.A. Times there is an editorial by Janis Ian about the RIAA and their counter-productive attempts to "help" musicians by thwarting MP3 downloads.

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p> The 40-year veteran of the recording industry indicates that merchandise sales rose over 300% after recordings were made available in MP3 format online.

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p> Interesting to hear another artist complaining that the RIAA is not working on their behalf.

Quoting from the action alert at the EFF, "Representatives Rick Boucher and John Doolittle recently re-introduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 107), which would enact labelling requirements for usage-impaired "copy-protected" compact discs, as well as several amendments to 1998's infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

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p>Please follow the EFF link above and send off a fax or email to your representative!