BookBlog

SXSWi

I typically spend SXSW assiduously avoiding most of the programming, hanging out with friends in the hallway and the streets, enjoying the austin/california social network infill. This time for inexplicable reason I sought out more programming than usual.

The geo panel was interesting because I haven't been following the field super-closely. There were intriguing visualizations of taxi trips across london and stress levels of pedestrians. The data showed pretty pictures, but more context and real investigative research would be needed to determine what the information teaches.

Jerry Paffendorf from Electric Sheep talked about simulacra of 3d places in "second life". The point doesn't grab me. I love ideas about annotating the 3d world (and Liz' mention about annotating virtual worlds). But making a second life simulation of Palo Alto and moving in? Why?

There were some interesting bits in the hallway: a demo of a prototype university tour guide app running on a Nokia mobile, where you can find information and annotations about the various buildings and programs. A friend's grad school credit project to build an annotated map of a new infill neighborhood, for the interests of neighbors, local businesses, and potential residents.

Kathy Sierra was good on the need for contextual help, and kind of off-base (if she was serious), about computerized help systems that recognize human emotion. It's really hard to imagine an IA that would make a pissed off customer be less irate, rather than more irate.

Danah Boyd had a fabulous interview with her mentor, Henry Jenkins about the growth and increasing recognition of fan culture, and fearmongering about the threats of myspace and cousins. Re: combatting bad laws. The people in the room have more power than they know. Just a bit of organizing would go a long way.

From a panel on building a great in-house design team, how to hire designers. a) poach. b) hire them out of school and teach them how to have a job. Alternatively, c) build a community around agile design, and get to know good people.

Technology at SXSW was in much better shape in years past. The network was occasionally flaky but mostly on. The sessions were being podcast, greatly reducing the anxiety about missing any given thing.

SXSW: Shorter Kathy Sierra

Add contextual help to your application. Think about where users are getting stuck. Fantisize about software that reads emotions. Show pictures of puppies and cute people.

Fry's Austin has been holding my computer hostage

Fry's in Austin still has my laptop computer. I bought the Fujitsu touchpad in Austin before I moved to California. When I was in Austin two weeks ago, the computer stopped charging. I'd had problems with the internal part of the power connector on Fujitsu laptops before, so I figured that's what it was, and took it into Fry's. The friendly service person said they would look into it. If they were done by Monday afternoon while I was leaving town, they'd let me know and I'd pick it up. Otherwise they'd send it to me in Austin.

A week goes by. No computer. I called them last weekend. They had diagnosed the problem on Thursday. It was the power adapter failing, not the inside part. They were waiting for me to pay an $89 diagnostic fee. They hadn't called to tell me that's why they waiting.

The service person said that they might have the part in stock, and that she'd be willing to go check. At that point, I made the mistake of asking her to look for the power adapter, but to ship without the power adapter if it was not in stock.

A week later I call Fry's again. Turns out the power adapter was not in stock. So, Fry's kept the computer, did not ship it, and didn't notify me. The service person I talked to this weekend promised she is going to ship the computer, although Fry's has a policy not to ship computers (now they tell me??). The service person told me they are not charging me for the shipping, not because they want to waive the fee to apologize for bad service, but because they forgot to put the shipping charges on e.arlier. The service rep was not apologetic at all. She sounded quite annoyed that I had the nerve to want my computer back, and pleased with the level of incompetence they had managed to achieve so far.

Moving logistics

The Green Muse is playing Morphine. I'm at a pause in moving logistics. Just bought a duffel bag to carry the sleeping bag and camping pad, since I'll be in the new apartment without furniture for a week or so. The new owner wants the lawnmower and leaf vac/blower (yay!), but I may need to dispose of a perfectly fine washing machine if nobody buys it from Craigs List. Austin Public Library will submit my $25 in fines to a collection agency where it will go on my credit rating, but their computers are down so I can't actually pay them.

The local music scene that Mark Sandman helped catalyze in Boston seemed like an oddity there; that kind of community instinct is normal in Austin, and is one of the things I'll miss about Austin.

I prepared for the hurricane, and all I have are these extra peas

So, I got a concerned call from my Mom on Thursday morning, with a complete disaster preparedness shopping list. Flashlights and batteries, radio, water, canned food, sensible so far. Not quite enough. Do you have two to three weeks of food? Canned fruits and vegetables? A cooler? A tent and sleeping bag? Are your papers in a waterproof container?

Now, Austin is 150 miles inland, and my house is pretty well elevated from Stacy Creek. I figured that the most likely scenario if the storm came by was a lot of rain and wind, and the power out for a few hours, a day or two if it's really bad.

So I went to the HEB, and got some water, tuna, crackers, pbj (all of which will get consumed during the normal course of things). And, against my better judgement, this can of peas. I resisted the temptation to buy a styrofoam longhorn cooler, thank goodness. Came home from the store and found that the hurricane had changed route. The peas will make a fine food bank donation.

p.s. wishing the best for the folks in East Texas and Louisiana who are getting hit by the hurricane, and the folks in Houston for the traffic jam on the way home.

Neighborhood veggies

The new Farm to Market Grocery on South Congress is a super-convenient and friendly little storefront with fresh organic vegetables from local farms.

It's not cheap, but it's better food-per-dollar than takeout, and a fraction of the hassle of Central Market or the Whole Foods theme park, or HEB's sad little organic produce section.

The veggies are the star of the show, but they also have fridge cases with organic dairy and frozen food, and shelves with packaged staples and condiments.

They also do a fine job with small quantities of fancy treats. A few days ago, I was buying dinner and craving dessert. They had a tiny container of goats-milk ice cream (no photo). Yum. For the money, less volume and more happiness.

Unlike the local Disney-qua-grocer, which requires you to get a permit to take a picture of their displays, the Farm to Market crew were happy to see a customer take snapshots.

Belated praise for Library Lookup

Jon Udell's justly-praised Library Lookup bookmarklets snag the url of a book you're admiring on Amazon.com (or BN.com, or other book site), and finds out if it's in stock at your local library.

You can find the Austin link on this page. On Firefox/Windows, you can "right-click" to bookmark the link, and add it to your Personal Toolbar folder.

The only thing it doesn't do is return the books for you.

Texas bill bans gay foster parents

As blogged elsewhere, the Texas House passed an amendment to SB6, the child protective services bill, to prevent gay and bisexual parents from being foster parents.

1200 kids will be pulled from caring homes and put into institutions because of socially acceptable prejudice against gay parents.

The child protective services agency is now responsible for investigating the sexual preference of people applying to be foster parents.

On the bright side, the Connecticut legislature just approved civil unions.

On the dark side, via AmericaBlog, Microsoft withdrew support at the last minute from a gay anti-discrimination bill in Washington State, after years of promoting its support for gay rights.

According to a story published in the Stranger, the change was prompted by a complaint by a single Christian-right organization that threatened a boycott. The Stranger quotes Microsoft's government relations person as saying, in response to concern that Microsoft's reversal will kill the bill, "no one will ever know."

The list of Pacific Northwest companies supporting the bill includes: Boeing, Nike, Coors Brewing, Qwest Communications, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Corbis, Battelle Memorial Institute, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc, and more.

Washington House Bill 1515 would protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing, banking, insurance, and other matters by adding sexual orientation to a state law which already bars discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, and mental or physical handicap.

The vote is scheduled on Friday, so if you'd like Microsoft to rethink, follow this link.

HB3314 may refocus on library filtering

At a hearing on HB3314 on Monday night, the sponsor said that she may focus the bill specifically on libraries.

According to the US Supreme Court in United States v. American Library Association, filtering software used in a library needs to enable adults to turn the filtering off. Representative Gattis, who is part-owner of a wireless broadband company, explained that it is not practical to deploy filtering to public access points.

In 2001, the Texas Library Association helped to defeat a library filtering amendment to the appropriations bill. Current Texas law requires library internet filtering only for recipients of TIF grant funding, a program whose revenues are no longer being used to fund library computers.

The hearing starts at about 2:20 at this video

Bill protects truckers from Playboy

HB 3314, up for hearing in the Texas House State Affairs committee, would require the state to filter internet access at highway rest stops.

Since last May, the Texas Department of Transportation has offered wifi access at state rest stops. There is also wifi access at some Texas state parks provided in partnership with Tengo Internet.

This bill mandates filtering at any state-provided network on public property.

This bill protects truckers at rest stops and campers in their RVs at campsites from adult content.

Sounds both wasteful and unconstitutional.

Texas Bill Would Close Meetings About Computer Security

HB 3245 would exempt meetings discussing "matters relating to computer security or the security of other information resources technologies" from the state's Open Meetings Act.

Other laws already allow agencies to keep sensitive information secret. This bill forbits the discussion of computer security policy in public. For example, it would stymie efforts to improve the security of electronic voting systems, by keeping skilled academic and private-sector experts out of the public policy discussion.

Let the members of the House State Affairs Committee know that "security through obscurity" is bad policy.

Copynight

The night after the Grokster case was argued in the Supreme Court, a batch of Austinites gathered in the Club de Ville courtyart to sip drinks and chitchat about digital rights.

Don Turnbull and David Nunez of EFF-Austin were there at Club de Ville, as were Clay, who invited us, Clay's housemate Austin, and Cody Koeninger, who wrote in with his name in the comments, after I embarrassingly forgot it.

Copynight is basically a standalone meetup for copyfighters. The instigators are Ren Bucholz and David Alpert, also of Ipaction (IPAC), the nascent digital rights fundraising and activist group.

Copynights have also sprung up in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Washington DC, Raleigh, Chicago, Toronto, and Providence.

We speculated about what will happen if Grokster loses. Will that simply encourage the spread of the "darknet" -- encrypted networks that are harder to trace?Is technology progress inevitable, even if the technology is illegal? Is the legal prohibition of filesharing doomed to suffer the same fate as the prohibition against alcohol?

(I think it might be inevitable globally, but that doesn't mean that the US will remain a leader if we use laws to slow progress. My favorite example is the Ottoman empire which outlawed unlicensed printing presses. At the height of the scientific revolution in Europe, there were 17 printing presses in the entire Ottoman empire. Progress happed elsewhere, but it passed the Ottomans by because they used their legal system to stifle the technology within their borders.)

We connected the copyfight to the effort to Save Municipal Wireless -- the fight against the SBC-fueled bill to outlaw city-supported high-speed internet. In both cases, an old and wealthy industry (movies and music; telephone and cable) is trying to outlaw the spread of new technology that puts their old business model at risk.

And -- hopefully most important -- we brainstormed about things we could do.

• keep meeting, and build a community of people who care about the issue
  
• teach about digital rights in high schools
  
• meet with our congresscritters about IP issues
  
• spread the word about alternative copyright and distribution to the indy community in Austin

Hopefully, Ren and David will be helping to spread the good ideas around.

In a side note about the tools, it's gratifying to see standalone "meetup" software. Copyfight doesn't have the fancy reminder and venue selection system that meetup has, but they do have a clickable map to find your meetup, and tools to organize a new one. The map is a nice touch -- you can see little groups of copyfighters lighting up the continent.

Dewey award - thanks and puzzlement

Like Chip, my friend and co-organizer of SaveMuniWireless.org I was one of ten nominees for the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award, which is given out annually at the SXSW festival. This year's winner was Roger Steele, for his work at Manchaca Elementary School.

The award nomination was gratifying but rather puzzling. I received a cryptic email message explaining to come to a room at SXSW at 4pm on Monday. The biographical information they had was partial and not-quite-correct. There was moving memorial testimony about Dewey Winburne, and nominees were called up to receive plaques.

I am glad that Austin makes the effort to find and reward people who are doing community service. People like Chip embody an ethic of community service that is distinctive and good about Austin.

If the group organizing the awards wants to strengthen community service in Austin, perhaps they could organize get-togethers where current and past nominees can meet, network, and find opportunities to bolster their work.

Perhaps there could be a website to highlight community projects on an ongoing basis. If there are common interests, perhaps a Yahoo group or forum could provide ongoing communication.

I have no idea who organized the awards, so I'm not even sure where to forward these suggestions.

Community networks and the constitution

When I started working to oppose the municipal wireless ban with EFF-Austin, I wasn't convinced it was a constitutional issue. As I got more involved, I realized how important it was to constitutional freedoms.

The justification comes from Prof Lawrence Lessig's insight that an information-age society is governed by law code and computer code. The law tells us what we may do, and the computer code supplies us with the choices.

The printing press made it possible to have the communication and free speech to support democracy. Internet access is a major enabler for free speech in our time. Banning community wireless is, among other bad things, a significant threat to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

I do public interest tech policy volunteer work with two affliations: the ACLU-TX cyberliberties project, and EFF-Austin. ACLU-TX has signed on the to the list of groups opposed to the municipal wireless ban.

Indiana anti-municipal wireless bill dies in committee

A bill in Indiana to prohibit cities and towns from offering wireless networks died in committee on Wednesday. The story is good news for advocates of community networks in Texas. The ban that failed in Indiana is similar to a provision being heard at the Texas House Regulated Industries next week.

Indiana cities and towns made a compelling argument that the networks help economic development. For example, , the town of Auburn, Indiana (pop. 6000) was able to save jobs in local automotive repair and medical transcription business as a result of a municipal wireless network.

Ben Franklin and public wireless

Ben Franklin would have loved public wireless. Ben Franklin was an entrepreneur who saw the connection between private enterprise and public infrastructure.

Franklin created a thriving printing business, seizing opportunities in a colonial economy hungry for news and education. But there was no reliable way to send newspapers to customers. It could take weeks or months for a message to cross the colonies.

So Franklin helped to set up the postal service, which provided regular mail delivery, and stimulated both business and civic life.

Franklin also helped to set up volunteer fire brigades that would battle all fires, regardless of whose property was burning. Before the volunteer fire brigades, wealthy people created fire clubs that would put out the fires of duespaying members. But when a poor person's house or workshop caught fire, the whole neighborhood could burn. Franklin saw that a public fire protection service would protect everyone.

Roads, street lights, and fire protection are civic services that provide overall benefits to civic life and economic development. Municipal wireless has the potential to be an amenity that creates spillover economic development.

Innovative communities are experimenting with municipal wireless, like Colonial Philadelphia experimented with fire protection in the 1700s, and cities experimented with street lights in the late 1800s.

But the telecom industry wants to stop these experiments before they get started. They want to make it illegal to provide wireless service as a public amenity.

Imagine if all streets were toll roads. Imagine if it was considered illegal, and radical, for a city or town to build public roads?

Conservative philosophy provides a valuable critique of the role of government. It's important to critically examine what government does and get the government out of businesses where the private sector does a better job. In today's American politics, efforts to reduce government spending and foster enterpreneurial growth have overshot the mark.

When the Founding Fathers started this nation, they had a strong sense of the common good. They valued liberty of conscience, and freedom for economic self-determination (with a large blind spot). And they saw that individual and prosperity were fostered by public service, and by public services which promoted the general welfare.

The initiative to ban public wireless goes against the patriotic spirit of Ben Franklin, who fostered the development of civic services that were complementary to economic development, private enterprise and liberty.

Texas tries to ban public wireless

An omnibus telecom bill in Texas is seeking, among other things, to ban municipalities from offering wireless services. Currently, Austin has a project to provide wireless in public places.

The attempt to forbid cities and towns from offering wireless services is seriously misguided.

Public wireless is like roads and street lights. Like roads, public wireless access enables economic development. When a road is paved, houses and businesses spring up around it. When an urban area has street lighting, business and civic life continues into the night.

Most streets aren't toll roads, and street lights don't have a fee per block. These services are generally accepted to provide public benefit above and beyond the revenue they would bring if they relied on fee-for-service funding.

Networking is in an early stage, like street lights were a long time ago. Cities and towns ought to be able to make their own decisions about what will bring economic development to their area. Each municipality makes its own decisions about roads and public transportation. Similarly, the decision about whether and how to provide wireless services should be a local decision. We don't want to *prevent* cities and towns from choosing to provide wireless as a service that will incent additional economic activity. We don't want to mandate one model, for the whole state, in an early stage of development.

I was an extra in a car ad

Went with David Nunez to a travelling exhibition of "urban art"; paintings on 3' x 8' panels that draw on genres of subway car graffiti, comic books and 70s album covers, with a live painter and dj. The art was mostly from LA and New York, with smatterings of Chicago and San Francisco. Interesting, the LA art was more pop:

The New York art drew more on classic graffiti style:

The show was a third art, a third party, and a third reality tv commercial. The travelling show is put together by "The Rebel Organization, Inc... an 'off-line' viral marketing and promotion company that specializes in connecting brands to the progressive youth culture. "

There were several people in black clothing with fancy-looking cameras and sound gear, presumably making the video. Austin's clusters of designers, art school kids, theater marketing folk, and art party scenesters did their best to provide authentic artsy-looking ad footage.

You can't complain too loudly about corporate sponsorship. Michelangelo had some really good gigs advertising the Catholic Church. Subcultures are all part-community, part scene. On the other hand, it's kind of odd being a prop to advertise a car that's being sold to wannabe hipsters.

Capitol Cafeteria pretends to offer wireless

The Less Networks wireless hotspot at the Capitol Grill is fabulous in concept, but the implementation is close to pointless.

"I'm sorry, you can't use that power outlet. It's a safety hazard." David Rice, the General Manager of the statehouse cafeteria came over to warn me as I checked office email, since the power cord of my laptop snaked along the wall toward a hallway plug.

Me: "Are there any other power outlets to use. "

Rice: "No. It's a safety hazard. People might trip over the cords."

Me: "Would it be possible to add more power outlets?"

Rice: "No. The State Preservation Board doesn't allow adding more power outlets."

Rice: "Oh, and by the way, I turn wireless access off between 11 and 3, when the cafeteria is busy."

So: the Capitol Grill advertises itself as a "wireless hotspot", but doesn't have any electric power, and isn't available during the hours that most people want to use the cafeteria.

I was ecstatic when I heard that cafe and the conference rooms were going to have wireless access. I do volunteer lobbying with the ACLU-TX amid my day job responsibilities. It would be extremely valuable to be able to communicate with the office if I go to the capitol during the day. Wireless at the capitol is a great step toward making politics accessible to citizens.

Fellow civic bloggers, if you'd like to request real wireless access at the Capitol cafeteria, express your opinion to:

David Rice
General Manager
Capitol Grill
512-472-5451
No email address on the business card.

If you'd like to tell the State Preservation board that their no-wall-outlet policy is keeping Texas communication in the 19th centry, contact:

State Preservation Board
Caretakers of the Texas Capitol
201 E. 14th St. Austin, TX
512-463-5495

East Austin Studio Tour

Some belated notes about the East Austin art tour last weekend, which was much fun despite the pouring rain.

The most entertaining spots were Blue Genie and a pair of graceful glassblowers who worked together like musicians. The art I liked best was by a sculptor who makes human/animal/robot scultures out of old metal tools; his work was playful and serious and a little disturbing.

No pictures. Hereby a resolve to get a digital camera, as a reward for getting some useful but boring things done by next weekend.

Missed the Travis Heights walk. I hope they do it again soon.

Slacker trilogy

The morning after I saw Slacker, I overheard a couple of coffee-shop customers swapping anecdotes about automotive repo jobs. Preachers, apparently, are particularly self-righteous about avoiding bills. One local dealership is trying to improve the quality of its credit portfolio by making the salesmen responsible for reposessing cars from their own delinquent customers.

As a particpant and observer of Austin's cafe culture, I expected Slacker to be a touchstone to Austin's cafe culture, and so it was. The pickup conversation with the dogged conspiracy theorist, off-kilter petty scams, windy pop-culture critiques, convoluted romantic and roommate drama, each vignette unfolds after the other, in desultory succession.

Immediately after I watched the movie, I wasn't sure how much I liked it. At the end of each scene, the camera follows a new person off to another weird tangent; without plot and character development, jolts of recognition and amusement war with ambient boredom. The film improves with recollection and comparison.

Clerks built on the low-budget, indy cred of Slacker. The setting is North Jersey, the anomie is post-highschool rather than post-college. Wierd misadventures afflict the convenience store clerks; a rabid anti-smoking advocate riles up customers coming in to feed their habit; a streethockey game is rescheduled to the store's roof during business hours. Several of the anecdotes are truly funny, other scenes may have been funnier in brainstorming than onscreen, like the customer who obsessively checks for the perfect egg.

Despite the similar low budget, anedotal plot, and slacker characters, Clerks is a more conservative, wannabe Hollywood movie. Unlike Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith cobbles together a plot, tacks on a love interest - Dante, the antihero schlemiel clerk, has an affectionate, go-getter girlfriend but pines for a dramatic and inconstant ex. Smith adds a pop-psych denoument when Dante explains to his best friend the childhood origins of his pathologically passive attitude toward life. The Clerks have opportunities but lack get-up-and-go; there aren't any opportunities for liberal arts grads in recessionary early 90s Austin.

High Fidelity is the slacker film turned into a sitcom, but I liked it best anyway. The John Cusack character is the owner of a small, starving-artist-snobby vintage record store in Chicago. His music geek clerks -- Jack Black's customer-hostile connoiseur and Todd Louiso's adorable nebbish steal the show. Over the course of the movie, the characters learn to transcend slackerdom; Cusack learns that his love life is stuck on repeat breakup because he acts like a jerk; the clerks grow beyond roles as passive critics, becoming actors in love and music.

It would take a Chicago person to explain whether and how the film captures Chicago like Slacker captures the windy aimlessness of Austin cafe culture and Clerks gets the gritty ambition of working class North Jersey. I suspect that it doesn't. Translated from Nick Hornsby's London novel, some of the social types don't ring quite right; the skater punks would probably be better as London working class; the egocentric high-chic girlfriend and would probably be better as British bohemian upper class.

Directed by veteran English-gone-Hollywood director Stephen Frears, the movie is more polished and more conventional than the other two slacker films. The movie tells the story of the sentimental education of geeky guys lightly and well. The retail and romantic vignettes are funny, the emotional tenor is wry and affecting.

In the week of a high-stakes election, the comedy of early 90s anomie seems far away.

"User Error" is a voting machine problem

Last weekend, frightened emails circulated around Travis County. At least one voter tried to select a straight-party Democratic ticket. When proofing the ballot, George Bush was selected for President.

Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir and the local democratic party were quick to spread the word that this was "human error and was not a machine malfunction."

They're doing the right thing to get the word out and ask voters to proof their ballots. But they're missing the point about voting system design. User errors are symptoms of design flaws.

The way it happens is this. "After pressing ENTER after marking Straight Democrat, some voters inadvertently turn the SELECT wheel one click through the ballot while meaning to go to the final "PROOF" page. If you hit enter at that point, your cursor is over the first candidate on the ballot: Bush/Cheney."

For the few steps, the user follows a pattern to make selections, and suddenly, the pattern changes. If the user doesn't notice they change, they accidentally select the wrong candidate.

Like the infamous "butterfly ballot" in Florida, this is a design flaw with the user interface.

These types of design flaws can be uncovered with usability testing. There are well-known techniques for detecting and fixing problems in the user interface that lead users to make mistakes.

But we don't do usability testing in Travis County. Before elections, the county does "logic and accuracy testing" to prove that the voting system generates the right results when voters make valid selection. The county puts out press releases explaining how this testing proves that the voting system is reliable.

But we don't test what happens when voters make mistakes. Usability testing is critical for all sorts of systems -- particularly systems where user choices have serious consequences like voting.

The lack of usability testing -- and the lack of rigorous security testing -- show that voting administration hasn't yet caught up to the responsibility of electronic voting.

Congrats to Prentiss

for being named Best Austin Blogger in the Austin Chronicle Best of
Austin 2004 Critics' Poll.

So many things to like about Prentiss' blog

* a grab-bag that always has tasty new surprises about art, music, books, movies, architecture, and cultural categories-without-names
* a Austin-lover's tour of Austin, highlighting the distinctive and strange
* a parent's perspective that is caring, protective, and attuned to the strangeness of kids discovering the world.

Thanks, Prentiss!

Texas SOS not making sense

The week that Ohio's Republican Secretary of State booted Diebold for failing to fix security holes, the Texas Secretary of State claims that advocates for "safe voting" are mere "special interests."

The Secretary of State contends that the Texas process to certify voting systems is rigorous -- even though our certification process didn't pick up on Diebold's problems, didn't notice thatthe audit feature in ES&S systems is broken -- a system used in Dallas, Chambers, and Bexar Counties.

He says the fact that we haven't had a massive failure yet proves that the system is safe. Not good to have government officials with their heads in the sand.

OutFoxed in Austin

I was also at the MoveOn sponsored showing of OutFoxed that Tim Trentham wrote about. The video shows how the partisanship of Fox news trumps the pretense of news reporting. Funny but telling bit included a reporter assigned to provide stirring and dramatic coverage of Reagan's birthday at the Reagan library a few years ago, even though there was nobody there but a group of fourth graders; and watching the Fox team echo RNC talking points, like the day they repeated the ridiculous meme mocking John Kerry for knowing French. The scarier parts were the news anchors calling anyone opposed to the Iraq war unpatriotic, and the surveys falsehoods believed by many Fox viewers, like WMD discovered in Iraq,.

The follow on actions promoted by MoveOn, Common Cause, and other sponsoring groups include
* opposing media consolidation
* asking local networks for fairer news coverage
* supporting AirAmerica, a new, left-of-center radio network, and other alternative networks. (Added. Note. I haven't seen AirAmerica - don't have an opinion about it).
* a campaign to legally challenge the Fox News "Fair and Balanced" trademark. One the one hand you can't trademark a phrase, so the suit has grounds. On the other hand it seems rather goofy to sue about a marketing slogan ("Coke doesn't really add life....").

What really struck me, watching the debased state of corporate media, was the role that we can play. It's not just about begging the mass media to do a better job (in conflict with their mission to make a profit by selling violence and sex).

It's about being the media. Local news is understaffed and insubstantial. If a blogger goes to a meeting and writes about what happened, we can cover the story.

And it's about using the access we have to to get more sources of media. John Robb does a much better job of covering international terrorism in Global Guerrillas than the mainstream press. Google News provides a selection of stories from worldwide media. It's eye-opening to see the take on the day's news around the world.

So, we need to fight the system, but it's as important to create the new system.

More - nice piece by Lessig disarming criticism of the film.

Still more, via Joi Ito -- 80% of of blog readers read blogs for "news they can't get elsewhere.

Toll roads create traffic jams

Apparently there's a backlash against the unpopular plan to put toll roads on Austin highways. There's a petition to recall Mayor Wynn for his pro-toll position.

Despite public input 10-to-1 against, CAMPO Transportation Policy Board members passed a modified version of the toll plan Monday 16-7. Loop 360 will require another vote, but parts of Mopac, US 290, US 183 and the new SH 45 will be converted to toll roads.

What on earth are the politicians thinking! I lived in New England for a long time, where there was a long tradition of toll roads. They were wildly unpopular, because toll roads create traffic jams.

In 1996, Massachusetts governor Bill Weld made a big popular splash when he presided in person of the destruction of tollbooths on the Massachusetts turnpike.

Even the new electronic systems make cars slow down to pass through the lanes. This is not what you want during rush hour and during holiday vacation exodus periods.

I hope we can stop this before Austin learns the hard way.

Mosquitoes

Is there any truth to the tale that vitamin B discourages mosquitoes?

They always find me. In a group of people, I'm the one usually covered in bites. It's been a wet late Spring/early Summer in Austin. Mosquito repellent is somewhat helpful for spending long amounts of time outdoors near water or at sunset, but doesn't seem like a good everyday solution -- I get bitten on the few square inches I forgot to cover. And covering oneself with greasy toxin everytime one goes out seems like a cure worse than the disease.

Do others really cover up in mosquito repellent every time they leave the house? Any better solutions than staying indoors during the summer, and trying not to open the door too often?

Texas strips Unitarian church tax exemption

The second and sixth US presidents, John Adams and John Quncy Adams, belonged to the Unitarian church.

But that's not enough for the State of Texas. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled this week to take away the tax exempt status of the Unitarian church, because the church "does not have one system of belief." See this Knight Ridder story for more detail.

Why stop with the Unitarians? Hindus and Buddhists surely don't meet the standard either. In fact, Jewish theology has far to much room for variance in important areas such as the precise nature of the afterlife. Time to tax synagogues and temples.

The failed attempt to finance schools with "sin taxes" on cigarettes, strip clubs, and lottery machines was clearly a step in the wrong direction.

Clearly, we need to finance Texas education with taxes on religious organizations with insufficiently rigorous theology. Not to mention atheists, who should register to pay extra taxes.

Or maybe reread the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Texas strips Unitarian church tax examption

The second and sixth US presidents, John Adams and John Quncy Adams, belonged to the Unitarian church.

But that's not enough for the State of Texas. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled this week to take away the tax exempt status of the Unitarian church, because the church "does not have one system of belief." See this Knight Ridder story for more detail.

Why stop with the Unitarians? Hindus and Buddhists surely don't meet the standard either. In fact, Jewish theology has far to much room for variance in important areas such as the precise nature of the afterlife. Time to tax synagogues and temples.

The failed attempt to finance schools with "sin taxes" on cigarettes, strip clubs, and lottery machines was clearly a step in the wrong direction.

Clearly, we need to finance Texas education with taxes on religious organizations with insufficiently rigorous theology. Not to mention atheists, who should register to pay extra taxes.

Or maybe reread the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Senate Hearing on Electronic Voting

The Texas Senate State Affairs Commitee held a hearing yesterday, May 17, on the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Professor Dan Wallach and I testified on behalf of a voter-verifiable paper trail. (Without a paper trail, there is no good way to audit or recount the result of an election.)

Chairman Duncan asked county administrators sharp questions about what happens if there are discrepancies in the vote tally. Senator Nelson's son has worked in computer security, and she asked questions that showed an understanding of the vulnerabilities and risks that affect computer systems.

The voter-verified paper trail got better reception in Senate State Affairs than at the House Elections Committee hearing on March 31, where the Representatives had a much earlier level of understanding about computer security. Chairwoman Denny dismissed evidence of problems with electronic voting systems in other states, even though the same systems are used in Texas as elsewhere in the country. We have more education to do in the House.

You can download and watch the video of the meeting here on the "lege-cam."

Dan's testimony is here

Austin library unclear on the concept

The Web catalog is currently on-line:
Sunday 10:30 a.m.-12 midnight
Monday-Friday 6 a.m.-12 midnight
Saturday 6 a.m.-9 p.m.

The Web catalog is not available on Library holidays.

Do they have little sql elves to fetch the book references from the database? Does the web server belong to a union?
Or do they take the system down every night while data entry clerks in Bangalore add new novels and take away obsolete collections of magazines.

California bans touch-screen voting

Last Friday, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified all touch-screen voting machines in the State of California.

As Kim Vetter reported in Wired Magazine,

Counties will not be able to purchase any new e-voting machines unless the machines can produce a voter-verified paper trail that voters can use to authenticate that their vote was recorded accurately. This pushes up a previous deadline Shelley put forth in December when he mandated that all new voting machines purchased after June 2005 would have to produce a paper trail.

The last straw was the dodgy activity by Diebold (which serves El Paso County among others). In Kim Vetter's words at Wired, "Diebold Election Systems made last-minute, untested changes to a device used with its AccuVote-TS and TSx voting machines. As a result of glitches, hundreds of polling places failed to open on time, disenfranchising voters who couldn't cast ballots." Secretary of State Shelley is referring Diebold to the Attorney General for the unauthorized upgrades.

The California decision was made after years of work by activists including Kim Alexander at Calvoter, and David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University, founder of Verified Voting educating state officials about the risks of non-verified voting.

We have a ways to go here in Texas. County and state officials are learning about voting system security. At a public hearing of the House Elections Committee, a county clerk testifed about the popularity of the Diebold system among voters. None of the state or county election administrators seemed concerned about the studies in the last year showing serious security flaws in these systems.

When presented with reports about evoting problems in other states, chairwoman Mary Denny declared that these stories were not relevant, because they did not happen in Texas. Imagine if Firestone tires self-destructed in California, and Texas officials said that the evidence wouldn't be relevant unless the tires exploded here in Texas.

This means we have more education to do here. But the trend nationwide is in the right direction.

Lightbulbs and focus

Little house-holdy things. Just solved a couple of lightbulb problems.

The reason the light fixture in the guest bath wouldn't take a new bulb was because the lightbulb had exploded, leaving the metal screw bottom in the socket. Unscrewed it, and put in the new lightbulb.

Three of the 50-watt halogen bulbs in the closed-in front porch unscrewed reasonably easily, using some attention to the angle to unscrew them from the recessed tracklight fixture while standing on a stepladder. The fourth (which was the first one I tried last time), unscrewed with some attention, using the geometry from the first three.

Took about 25 minutes and focused attention. Glad to have that kind of time on weekends again.

Anybody know what kind of coating goes on to these halogen things, and what health problems are caused by little flakes of coating falling off?

Tax night

I made a last-minute decision to contribute to an IRA last night. At 7pm, I headed out for the first time to Austin's main post office. It's in a suburban office park off 290 on CrossPark Drive. Three or four postal employees stood in the grassy median strip of the office park drive near a few industrial size postal bins, in the balmy, still-light daylight savings pre-sunset, and took envelopes as cars made a slow u-turn around the median strip.

No traffic, no parking, no lines. Wonder if it was that mellow at a quarter to midnight?

Support freenode at sxsw

People who are using IRC at sxsw might want to contribute, here

Freenode is a non-profit that provides free internet relay chat to free/open source projects. Freenode godfather lilo is letting us use freenode at sxsw even though sxsw is a commercial project.

It would be cool to repay his generosity by contributing.

(I have no affiliation with freenode other than as a user)

Bureaucracy 2, SXSW 1

South by Southwest has a blogger-friendly program and a blogger-hostile venue. There's a great local and out of town blog crew are here, but they won't let us plug in or take pictures.

Cory Doctorow says:
* Contact the Austin Convention and Visitor's bureau and tell them that the no-power rule makes Austin hostile to visitors. Email: visitorcenter@austintexas.org. Phone (800)926-2282.
* If you're on a panel, give the audience permission to take photos and video.

It was announced this morning -- we can now plug in. woo-hoo!

Ron Wilson voted out of office

So glad to see that Ron Wilson, the chief Democratic party turncoat in the Texas Redistricting battle, was voted out after 27 years in the Texas legislature. Wilson was outvoted by Alma Allen, a member of the State Board of Education.

Wilson was the arch-villain in the EFF-Austin and ACLU-TX Cyberliberties battle against the SDMCA, the bill sponsored by the Motion Picture Association that gave internet service and content providers broad control over what users can do with their net connection.

When we went to his office to try and talk about the bill, Wilson's staff sent us directly to the MPAA lobbyists, do not pass go. No, they did not want to hear citizen concerns about the bill, yes you need to talk to the MPAA lobbyist in DC.

At least Wilson was consistent in his ethical stance. He was one of the leaders of an unsuccessful attempt to block an ethics reform bill last session with campaign disclosure and anti-conflict of interest provisions.

So glad voters noticed and sent Wilson home.

Sec of State posts election results

here

Who's bought your Texas Legislator?

fabulous map showing campaign contributions to legislators.

Evoting forum in Houston

Last week Wednesday, I was on an evoting panel at Rice University headlined by Professor David Dill. Dill spoke articulately about the need for a voter-verifiable paper trail his presentation is here.

After the meeting, several people talked to me about taking party platform resolutions asking the party to support a paper trail. One participant lives in a Houston-area county that's considering buying voting machines to replace a paper system. I recommended against it, since a paper system is safer until the electronic systems have a voter-verifiable paper trail.

The drive out to Houston was pretty -- through rural areas and little Texas towns. The drive back between 10pm and 1am was very very very long.

Are Bloggers Privileged?

Danah writes that blogging is a privilege, with preference to straight white males. Maybe at the top of the Technorati popularity charts. But take a look at the participants on Austin Bloggers and Austin Stories, the blog and journal portals. Core community members are women, queer, stay-at-home moms, workers in social work, teaching, non-profit, retail, tech-support, students, and job-hunting. This is a community, not a country club.

Statesman Covers Evoting Controversy

Scientists, Democrats distrust new electronic voting machines

By Scott Shepard, Sunday, December 7, 2003, Austin American-Statesman Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Computer voting machines have been touted as a solution to the problems of the 2000 presidential election, but some election officials and computer scientists are concerned that the machines, especially those with touch screens, might be inaccurate and, worse, susceptible to sabotage.

Great that the Statesman has the story. The only local folks they quoted were at Hart Intercivic.

Nifty community blog navigator

Chip Rosenthal put together an awesome weblog navigator for the Austin metablog. A new, handy sidebar lists the participating bloggers, and can also sort by number of Technorati links, Google Reference count, last posting date, alpha, and more.

Three cheers for open web service APIs, community social software innovation, and Chip.

Austin moments

Classic Austin moment at a Nathan Wilcox brunch on Sunday morning -- walked in, to find Jon Lebkowsky, EFF-Austin co-conspirator, deep in conversation with Erik Josowitz, the person who hired me at Vignette and brought me here.

There are two flavors of this classic moment:
1) finding that two people you know from different contexts are old friends going back a decade or two
2) finding that two people you know from different contexts are old enemies going back a decade or two.

Texas resident sues DirecTV under RICO

DirecTV has been conducting a scheme of intimidation against its customers, sending letters demanding a $3500 fine to over 100,000 customers who had purchased smartcards, which can be used to secure computer systems and offices, or to steal satellite TV service. This DirecTV tactic was the model for the exhorbitant civil penalties in the Texas SDMCA.

DirecTV is now facing a legal challenge that calls this tactic by its real name. Texas physician Rod Sosa, pursued by DirecTV for the smart cards he bought to secure his medical office computer, is one of three plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit accusing DirecTV of extortion under the RICO statute.

Wanted: web-enabled database to fight political corruption

I'm on the board of Campaigns for People, an organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in Texas politics.

A major ethics reform package passed this last legislative session, thanks in part to pressure from thousands of citizens on the CFP activist list, and tireless lobbying by CFP and a coalition of over 60 groups representing 3 million Texans. The ethics bill, HB1606, tightens loopholes that candidates used to avoid disclosing contributions electronically, and strengthens processes to investigate ethics complaints against office-holders.

CFP is seeking a coder for a pro-bono project that is helping to nab corrupt lawmakers.

CFP has compiled a database of campaign contributors in the Houston and San Antonio area. The data can be used by citizen groups to research the influence of money on legislation. The Sierra Club -- to give one example -- is using the data to identify politicians who took large campaign contributions from road contractors, and then allocated plum construction contracts to their campaign donor buddies.

CFP would like to make this database viewable and searchable on the web, to make it easier for citizen groups to research campaign contributions. The organization is running on a very slim budget, so the work would need to be done pro-bono.

If you are interested, please contact Fred Lewis, CFP President, at flewis@onr.com.

Green Muse

A red dragonfly buzzes the ornamental pond. She lands on a stalk of bamboo, which leans perilously. She flies away.

Eff-Austin Retreat

It was a good meeting last weekend; we outlined what we think we're doing and where we're going. We answered questions in a circle, which meant that the people who usually talk more talked less and vice versa. We're going to have membership which takes a higher level of organization, and will hopefully make it easier for more people to join and be active.

Then some people went home, and the folks who were left stayed out on the deck in to the evening, drinking beer and hanging out. Chip played the Zevon catalog on guitar, in sociably misanthropic and genially mournful manner. The sun set over the backyard meadow, which has clumps of cactus amid wildflowers. That's a benefit of living in a rural area 45 minutes out of town; the backyard is a meadow not an eyesore. We watched the stars circle overhead.

We stayed at the not-quite-finished winter house of a neighbor. Plastic sheeting is tacked over the roof insulation, tarpaper peels off the walls. Electricity and running water, but no indoor plumbing or A/C. The neighbor across the street has statues of birds on the fence running to the house. The neighbors behind have cockfights. It's a live as you please kind of neighborhood.

Wireless in 02144

In Somerville and Cambridge, the only public wireless I've been able to find is the T-Mobile service at Starbucks. If I'm missing some good public wireless, please let me know.

My hosts have WiFi, but there's a problem with sending outgoing mail. So I can send webmail, or queue mail, and head over to Starbucks.

Austin seems extensively unwired by comparison.

(This is the entry I mean to post in Austinbloggers, not the earlier one)

Redistricting Hearings Continue

The hearings on the Delay plan to eviscerate Travis County continue today at 4pm in the State House. The plan splits Austin into three pieces -- each a little bit of city, glommed onto a large swath of countryside. A new plan will be proposed today by Rep. King. Austinites who want congressional representation, head over to the Statehouse if you can.

Bamboo and sign art

Talked to Cory at the Green Muse about his vision for the back patio. It will be an Asian-inspired garden, with azaleas in pots, bamboo, and monkey grass. They'll show films, and have "live music, of course."

The front sign is being designed and constructed by Faith (?), who did the Blue Genie, Pieces of the Past, and a sculptural sign for a chiropractor of people raising their arms, bending, and touching their toes. Wonderful, playful things that make me smile, make the neigborhood nicer, and are good advertising, too.

At a table next to me, three women were preparing a photo shoot for a landscaping magazine.

I asked Cory about how he learned to garden. "You plant something and it dies, and you try to figure out why. It's a slow process."

Journalers happy hour

So, I went to the journalers' happy hour last night, following David Nunez' testimony that they don't bite.

Talked with Jette, of Celluloid Eyes, who did this brilliant impersonation of Prentiss Riddle, Greg Bueno, and several of Greg's friends from Japanese class.

The group seems quite friendly and social. A good number of the social activities that I do seem to involve some flavor of work (I tend to start and/or organize things). It was fine to