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• Stevens used his position as chairman of the Senate committee that writes Internet regulations to call for a crackdown on perfectly legal online porn depicting consenting adults. “My advice is you tell your clients they better do it soon, because we’ll mandate it if they don’t,” Stevens informed a representative of the adult entertainment industry.

Until Monday, Sen. Ted Stevens was best known in technology circles for his “series of tubes” analogy. Now he’ll be known for his jury conviction on corruption charges.

(Credit:
U.S. Senate)

• Like vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, Stevens has been a fast friend of Hollywood’s content industries. Stevens said at one hearing that a broadcast flag was necessary to curb Internet piracy of TV shows. “It is a subject that requires an act of Congress, in my opinion,” he said.

Such stances cement Stevens’ true technology legacy. Sadly, the “tubes” metaphor is one of the few ventures into Internet policy he got halfway right.

What turned Stevens into an Internet laughingstock was twofold: 1. An especially inept invocation of the “pipes” or “tubes” analogy. His additional “it’s not a big truck” improvisation didn’t help. 2. The fact that he dared to use the analogy to assail politically popular Net neutrality regulations. (If he had used it to call for such rules, you can be sure that the online chortling would have been muted or nonexistent.)

• In 2005, Stevens was the senator who seemed to call for resurrecting the justly reviled Communications Decency Act. “We ought to find some way to say, ‘Here is a block of channels–whether it’s delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is–to a home that is clear of the stuff you don’t want your children to see,’” he told reporters at the time, later saying he was referring to regulatory “tiers” like the movie “rating system.”

As CNET’s 2006 tech voter guide shows, Stevens voted for the Communications Decency Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Real ID Act–and against an effort to keep the Internet tax-free. He scored an unremarkable 53 percent overall on tech-friendly votes in Congress.

But poking fun at the senator, who is also known for his tantrums over the “Bridge to Nowhere,” misses the chance to critique actual legislative failings. Here are some of them:

• Stevens co-sponsored, along with Democratic senator Ernest Hollings, what’s probably the most ill-conceived technology bill in recent memory (and that’s saying something). It was called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act and would require practically any hardware or software to include embedded copy-protection technology.

• Stevens was no foe of Internet taxes. In 2006, he wanted to expand existing taxes on telephone systems to include all “communications” services, whatever that means. “I believe fax is a communication, I think e-mail is a communication, and I do believe they all should contribute,” he said. Undaunted, Stevens suggested that idea again the following year.

Stevens is running for re-election next week. Because it’s too late for the Republican Party to remove his name from the ballot and because it’s not terribly likely that Alaskans will vote for a convicted felon, Stevens’ conviction will aid the Democrats in assembling a filibuster-proof Senate majority. (They’re also hoping to pick up seats in races in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.)

Similarly, Internet engineers on discussion groups as august as Nanog regularly toss around terms like “fat long pipes.” And an Internet RFC from as long ago as 1989 refers to “filling the pipe” so “that the sender of data can always put data onto the network.” The word “tubes” has been used in antispam discussions years before anyone outside of Washington, D.C., heard of Stevens. And Princeton computer science Professor Ed Felten, to his credit, noted that the anti-Stevens criticism “seems a bit unfair.”

A federal jury in Washington, D.C., convicted the Alaska Republican of all seven charges of accepting gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor and then lying about them on official documents.

The irony is that Stevens’ famous analogy of a “series of tubes” was an entirely reasonable one. Electrical engineers have long used the analogy of pipes and tubes to explain voltage (water pressure) and current (gallons per second). The Unix operating system and its progeny use the term “pipes” to describe interprocess communications.

• Stevens also supported an ostensibly anti-phishing bill called the Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act. Earlier this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation described it as “a bill that would expand trademark law, limit consumer access to information about competitive products, and eviscerate key protections for anonymous speech.”

Sen. Ted Stevens has been found guilty on all counts in a corruption case.

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that “we know who you are, but also where you are”? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I’ll leave that to him. (The AFP headline ran under the unnecessary headline, “China’s mobile network: a big brother surveillance tool?”)

If Markey was really shocked, he was ignorant. If he was faking it, he was taking part in China alarmism on an issue that is news to practically no one in China. This is not the place to discuss the merits and demerits of government surveillance, but no one is surprised that it’s a fact. I wish U.S. politicians wouldn’t be so willing to make such statements about China just to grab the spotlight when journalists are unnecessarily aroused.

I just doubt this really could have been shocking to Markey, who is perhaps the U.S. Congress’ most prominent name on telecommunications policy. Along with liberal members of the FCC board, he’s been a friend to the “net neutrality” movement, and he was received warmly last year in Memphis at Free Press’ National Conference on Media Reform.

What struck me was U.S. Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) surprised reaction. Markey said the news was “bone chilling” and told AFP, “I have my eyebrows arched so high they’re hitting the ceiling.”

It’s hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery’s in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it’s fueling a wave of business innovation and “locative technology.”

Anecdotally, I would say the assumption among people involved with media and politics in Beijing is that it is trivially easy for the government to tap cell phones and gather location data based on which tower your phone is in touch with. E-mail also is often assumed not to be secure. Markey must know the U.S. government can do this too, especially in light of the illegal wiretaps by the Bush administration. (The secret monitoring of U.S. citizens would actually have been legal if they had bothered to get their warrants rubber-stamped by a secret court, so don’t think due process is a defense in the United States.)

Amid the drunken revelry and pulsing electronic music, one prominent tech-industry veteran at the party was asked exactly what Chi.mp is. “I’ll tell you what Chi.mp is. It’s venture money getting set on fire,” the jaded observer replied. Surveying the buoyant crowd, he added, “This feels a little like 1999.”

Someone with Levchin’s star power can fill that war chest, no problem. If you didn’t co-found PayPal, you might be out of luck. “The VCs are definitely holding their cards a bit closer to their chests,” a young dot-com entrepreneur observed at the conference, but then added that his own social-media company hadn’t seen trouble pulling in investors.

Like Andreessen’s Ning, Slide just went through a massive venture funding round, and Levchin insisted the best thing a company can do is just be smart. Slide, he told News.com, is looking at other revenue streams besides advertising. “Trying to shift away from advertising partially and going direct to consumers is a really good idea, because it cuts out one more party from the equation,” he explained. “During a recession time you don’t have to worry so much about building an enormous scale, you just have to build up a loyal base of fans that pay you a little bit.” He might want to tell that to Twitter, whose execs banter about scaling and growth nonstop but haven’t made significant revenue, because their investors can still keep them in business for the time being.

The atmosphere was radically different during the day at Web 2.0 Expo, as talk of economic recession was unavoidable. TechWeb’s Jennifer Pahlka, one of the expo’s organizers, told attendees in a welcome address on Tuesday that she thanked them all for coming to the conference “in this time of budgets that are being scrutinized, and some bad headlines.” Veteran entrepreneur Marc Andreessen was grilled in a keynote interview on his use of the term “nuclear winter” as a justification for his start-up Ning’s new round of venture funding.

Changing the world, sure. But it still helps to be realistic. “The recession will touch the Internet,” Slide founder Max Levchin, a Web 2.0 Expo keynote speaker, told CNET News.com in an interview. “There’s no question about it.”

SAN FRANCISCO–Wednesday night was a wild one.

Because tech bellwethers and indicators for the broader economy just aren’t agreeing, no one is sure how things will play out. But if there’s any precautionary measure that a concerned start-up can put in place, it’s to be prepared and spend your money wisely. Some companies filling the after-hours agendas at Web 2.0 Expo opted to skip the open bars, holding “meet-ups” with cash bars instead of free-for-all affairs like Chi.mp and Mashable.

Chi.mp exec Myles Weissleder said the choice to throw a party was a “strategic decision,” and a better way to spread buzz about his new company than sponsoring a booth at the Web 2.0 Expo show floor. “Nobody knew about Chi.mp last week, and I think everybody’s talking about it this week,” Weissleder said in a phone interview Friday. Chi.mp, he added, is backed by private investors rather than institutional venture capital, with seed funding “in the millions.”

The economic attitude of the Web 2.0 Expo hangs in an awkward limbo: The tech industry relies on innovation, but no one can deny that these economic times demand caution. What’s a geek to do?

This post was updated at 10:11 AM on Friday with comment from Chi.mp’s Myles Weissleder.

“We’re at a turning point akin to literacy or the formation of cities. This is a huge change in the way the world works.”

–Web 2.0 Expo organizer Tim O’Reilly

With investment banks going down and food prices going up, the gloomy economic forecasts have cast a dark cloud over cloud computing (and everything else getting talked about at Web 2.0). Yet tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are posting healthy earnings, and despite talk of an advertising downturn, new digital-ad networks seem to be debuting by the day.

The divide between “strategic decision” and goofy attention-grabber remains: “I walked out of Zivity.com’s offices with a lightsaber and 10 shirts,” conference attendee Dan Tentler told me while socializing after hours on Thursday. “I walked out with 10 pounds of gear.”

Conference czar Tim O’Reilly preached a keep-on-trucking sermon in his keynote address Wednesday, admitting, “We’ve been kind of whipsawed lately.” He also railed upon the statistics detailed in reports like one by Dow Jones VentureSource last week, which are finding that venture dollars for start-up companies are growing scarcer. Urging conference attendees to focus on innovation, he said, “If you’re following the headlines you might as well stay home, because you’ll be very terminally confused,” he said. “You have to think about what really matters.”

As part of this week’s Web 2.0 Expo, the ubiquitous digital-media blog Mashable enlisted a brand-new social-media site called Chi.mp to sponsor its all-night bash at a cavernous nightclub called Mighty. The open bar was flowing, the dance floor was seeing plenty of attention (a rarity at a tech industry party), and young women left and right were posing for photos with snappily-dressed Mashable overlord Pete Cashmore and numerous Chi.mp-branded trucker hats.

True, the racy adult site Zivity depends on subscriptions, not ad revenue. But did they really need to spend that venture cash on lightsabers?

It’s O’Reilly’s job to be bullish, though it seemed a little hyperbolic when he said the times are just too crucial to be cautious. “We’re at a turning point akin to literacy or the formation of cities,” O’Reilly said. “This is a huge change in the way the world works.”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the recession. It might take five years,” Levchin said. “It has proven to be clever of us to raise money just before the signs of the recession started. It really is a war chest, both for acquisition and for survival.”

commentary

It’s starting already. Actually, “it” has been in play for several years, as proprietary software vendors have been forced to chop their ridiculous license fees in order to win deals that their software hardly justifies.

CMS Watch reports on a deal it saw recently wherein the proprietary vendor staged a “fire sale” of its software while keeping maintenance prices high. Indeed, it’s arguably the case that the only value proprietary license fees provide anymore is setting a bar against which 18 to 25 percent in maintenance fees can be set.

The 75% license fee reduction smacks a bit of desperation, although note that Vendor Y does not so heavily discount its ever-beloved maintenance.

Every now and then, an established vendor panics (this time in the face of a looming recession?), and cuts prices in an attempt to go down-market, even though the tool itself is far from a commodity. They usually regret it. In any event, you the customer will still pay dearly for its customization.

Ah, the sweet smell of proprietary panic. We open-source vendors are ecstatic to help stoke the fire of your panic, because either way we’ll help customers through lower prices alone (if they stay with you, poor souls) or lower prices and more flexibility (if they go with us).

As near as I can tell, there’s only one loser in the equation. That would be the proprietary vendor. My heart bleeds for you.

The breakthrough sci-fi role-playing-game is back in Mass Effect 2. Lead Commander Shepard through the galaxy once again as you interact with different alien races. Mass Effect 2 is set to blast off in early 2010 for the PC and
Xbox 360.

How cheap can you get the Editor's Choice-winning Panasonic TH-50PZ800U?

The HD Guru has had a long career in the consumer electronics business, including 30 years as VP for a chain of consumer electronics stores. The good news for you is that he’s willing to share some of the knowledge he’s picked up over the years, and his latest blog includes some sage advice on scoring the lowest price when buying a new HDTV.

The HD Guru recommends basically a four-step method:

1) Research TVs online (of course, we recommend CNET’s HDTV reviews).

2) Go to a major retailer like Best Buy or Circuit City and look at your choices in person.

3) Go back online and find the absolute lowest price on your favorite HDTV.

4) Find a commission-based electronics store, and ask them to beat that price.

The HD Guru’s article has the full scoop on why this works so well, so you’ll want to read the whole guide if you’re getting ready to buy. He also tells you how to handle the other buying issues, such as extended warranties, the ins and outs of delivery service, and where to buy cables (check out our HDMI cable guide as well).

We could definitely see some people having some ethical qualms with this method, as it seems like you’re abusing the goodwill of major retailers’ displays, then squeezing all the commission out of the other employees. On the other hand, the commission-based employees don’t have to do much work–since you already know what HDTV you want to buy–so they’re essentially getting a “free” sale.

Do you think the HD Guru’s methods are fair, or should you just go to one store and settle for a “fair” price? Let us know in the comments–we’d especially love to hear your opinion if you work in a commission-based electronics store.

I know there will be very many among you who, inspired and never satiated by the YouTube video of Susan Boyle, wonder whether this is the most popular viral video of all time.

It is my duty to bring you an answer (as well as a Boyle interview with Scottish television that has already enjoyed more than 1 million views).

Visible Measures, a company that clutches the pulse of the online audience and refuses to let go, has identified more than 200 unique videos of Boyle’s performance. According to Visible Measures, the combined figures seem to have exceeded the performances of George Bush’s shoe thrower, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin, and President Obama’s victory speech.

But she hasn’t quite caught up with the “Evolution of Dance,” which may have enjoyed as many as 300 million views over the years.

Visible Measures calculates that in the week that ended Friday, Boyle’s “I Dreamed A Dream” attracted 47.7 million views and more than 125,000 comments.

The shoe thrower and Palin were in the 30 millions. While President Obama achieved around 18 million.

Now, please consider this. Boyle, who has revealed that she’s been taunted with nicknames such as Susie Bong or Susie Simple over her lifetime, will not sing again until around May 23 at the earliest–the next round of “Britain’s Got Talent.”

How will the online community bear not having new Susan Boyle material to get them through their mundane cubicled days?

Perhaps a video of Simon Cowell singing “You’re So Vain”? Just a viral thought.

The Raleigh News & Observer
reported today that North Carolina’s Computer Crimes unit has expanded from four agents to 13 since it was opened in 2003. Their agents are “overwhelmed with cases, nearly all of which involve people trying to sexually exploit children they meet online. Four years ago…predators found most of their victims through chat rooms. Now, nearly all have profiles on MySpace, Facebook, or some other social-networking site.”

In the world of social networking, companies like Facebook and MySpace should be doing all they can to create safe environments for their users, which include invited users age 13 (Facebook) and 14 (MySpace) and up, and countless younger kids who are registering as teens or 99-year-olds. I know there are reasonable disagreements about how best to ensure user safety, but that doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t try. I commend MySpace for working with law enforcement to create better programs, as they are the ones who deal with the worst outcomes of online predation.

If you can’t do it then hire a baby sitter who can.

Monday’s announcement that MySpace has unveiled a new safety plan, working in cooperation with 49 attorneys general, is a step in the right direction. However, it did draw the predictable criticism epitomized by this reader comment on The Social blog:

A Novel Idea…: reader comment from jltnol
Posted on: January 14, 2008, 2:24 PM PST
Story: MySpace agrees to social-networking safety plan

No one lives in a small town any more. The Internet connects us all with an interactive window to the larger world, creating a whole new set of challenges. For instance, parents can’t assume that they know whether or not their house, or the house of a friend down the street, contains porn that is accessible by kids. Some of the most upsetting incidents my own friends have experienced involved their very young sons (elementary-school age) being exposed to violent pornography when sleeping over at a trusted friend’s home. The parents in the host family didn’t know that their son was getting up at 5 a.m. and accessing these images and videos. In this case, a strong filter installed on the host family’s computer would have been an appropriate safeguard.

I am not saying shut down social-networking sites or even prohibit teens from using them. I am not saying that the whole Internet should be G-rated. And I realize that you can’t always protect kids who will work hard to get around safeguards. But we are going to need to work together, instead of being adversarial toward families, if we are going to help protect those kids, teens, and parents who are making an effort to be safe. Setting teens’ profiles to default to private is one good place to start, and making sure that all the default settings really do protect privacy is another. Let’s get started by addressing the obvious issues and move on from there.

Parents can’t know exactly what their kids are up to at all times, especially when the category “kids” includes teenagers. In fact, I bet that if I told you that I maintained absolute surveillance on a 15-year-old at all times, you’d think I was a paranoid, hyperinvolved parent.

Parents should do their best to make sure that young kids are always in safe, supervised situations, and that older kids have reasonable supervision (and have hopefully internalized some judgment and common sense by then), but we cannot just brush off the issues of online safety in one fell swoop by putting all the responsibility on parents.

Go Figure.

You need a license to drive and a license to fish, but anybody
can have a child.

Wonderful! Another chance to hone my argument against such an unrealistic point of view. This is like saying, “You had a kid, so it’s your job to drive safely. Why should
car makers have to provide seat belts and antilock brakes? If you don’t like it, don’t drive at all.”

I’ve been writing about parenting and technology long enough for themes to begin to emerge. Like Lou Dobbs talking again and again about the “War on the Middle Class,” I am going to keep following the evolving story about kids and online safety, and supporting the idea that “Safe Product Design is Good Product Design.”

Why can’t parents just do what the [sic] are supposed to do?
Part of parenting is knowing what your kids are up to all the
time.

But the police department of Gwent, Wales, felt it had to do something to highlight the realities of texting and driving, so together with filmmaker Peter Watkins-Hughes, it made a public service announcement.

It has apparently enjoyed more than 1 million views on YouTube. And it has already aroused cries that it is too graphic, too shocking, too much to watch.

It has already been discussed on NBC’s “Today Show.”

You have seen far worse in movies and with far less good intent. It can only go a small way to making teenagers and, frankly, half the alleged adults I’ve seen driving in California, consider the potential consequences of their self-involved habits.

But if it even makes one person think twice, or even once, about the consequences, then any amount of graphic content is to be applauded. There is surely nothing gratuitous about trying to save a life.

The film shows a teenage girl driving some friends in her
car.
Engrossed in her texting, she is involved first in one crash before her car is then broadsided by another.

Things can’t continue like this. I’m starting to worry whether Arsenal will finish in the top two. The team lacks any appetite in front of goal, except for Walcott, who had a good game (again). Adebayor’s haircut seems to have left him like Sampson post-Delilah. He can’t get more than an inch off the ground to drive down his headers. Very frustrating.

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Ugh. Arsenal appear to have hit a wall. While Manchester United are on a tear, routinely trouncing teams by four goals, Arsenal can barely find the net at all. Today Arsenal scored twice - once for Aston Villa (thanks, Senderos!) and once in the last minute of the match (I dislike you less than I did before, Bendtner), but it looked like a much lesser team than the hitherto dominant Arsenal.

At any rate, this team will not win the Premiership. We need something more. More bite in front of goal. More attack from the midfield. More confidence.