Technology

Todd Underwood offers a fascinating look at how various natural disasters have caused outages in parts of the Internet. He begins with the recent earthquakes that damaged seven subsea cables in east Asia (the cables built by Global Crossing which now belong to Hutchison Global Communications and Asia Netcom were among the very few that were unaffected). He also looks at the effects on the network from the 2003 northeast U.S. power outages and Hurricane Katrina. Here’s one vote for him to post an offered followup that shows which providers gained and lost transit customers and network capacity in the outages.

Today I received the following email from John Martin of Phoenix (whose email address begins with “satguys01”), who was apparently set off by my web page reporting my record of lawsuits against telemarketers, which he came across about 30 minutes earlier while doing a Google search for “arizona telemarketing attorney” (could he be in need of one?): Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST) From: John Martin Subject: Get a life You are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you. Just like a scummy attorney that profits from filing frivolous lawsuits. You raise the cost of doing business for companies, raise taxes by overburdening the courts, and therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the marketplace. What do you care? You made a dollar. Telemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The wheels would stop turning if there were no phones or business conducted on them. The Federal and State do no call list is just another angle for the Fed and State to make a buck. Just ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact and harass millions of citizens with automated messages and call people on the so called do not call list? So its OK for them to fund raise and get re elected (profit) using unscrupulous methods. But a legitimate business offering legit goods or services is restricted. Are there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like any other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit goods and services. Does your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch commercials on TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue them? Junk Mail does more damage to the environment than anything else. But the US post service make money on it so that will never stop. Screen you calls, that’s what caller id is for, hangup on automated messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame lawsuits. Do you really suffer any damages by listening to a message or having a dialer hang up on you? Or are you just an other greedy opportunist like you EVIL telemarketing counterparts just out for a quick buck? I sent the following reply: From: “James J. Lippard” [my email addr] To: John Martin Subject: Re: Get a life In-Reply-To: [email protected] The difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating the law, and I’m not. None of my lawsuits have been frivolous, which is why I have a 100% record of success. I’m only raising the cost of business for companies that are blatantly breaking the law; my impact on the courts is negligible–I always offer to settle out of court for the minimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I always file in small claims which minimizes the paperwork. The money I collect is specified as damages in the statutes, and serves not only to compensate me for the violations but to act as a deterrent to further violations. It has worked pretty well–I don’t get many such calls any more. If you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed. But if you violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose. What’s your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email to someone you don’t know? From your email address, I would guess that you’re in the satellite dish resale business, which is well known for its sleazy violations of telemarketing law. Are you a regular violator of the TCPA, John? BTW, I have a nice life. What kind of life do you have that you seek enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?For the record, I don’t watch television commercials (thanks, TiVo!) and I’m also very opposed to spam (and much of my professional life in the Internet industry has been devoted to combatting it). We also don’t go to see movies in the theater anymore except on rare occasion; we rent DVDs. I’m an advocate of permission-based marketing to individuals, not indiscriminate broadcast advertising.

These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT&T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a “Christian-based telephone company,” with a “Faith, Family, and Freedom” campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage. Mirman really gets them going–they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example. These calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal. United American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from “Faith, Family, and Freedom,” a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma’s Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia’s entry on United American Technologies. (Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.) ...

Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey: Stan Schwartz also received some creative directions:

I’ve got a couple of websites of hierarchically organized links that I’ve maintained for quite some time, though I haven’t really worked on them much lately. I currently get more spam link submissions than genuine link submissions to each, so I’d like to request contributions of legitimate entries. One is my skeptical links site, which is fairly extensive, especially on a few topics such as Scientology, creationism, the websites of skeptical groups, and critiques of organized skepticism. The other is my security links site, which is much less extensive, but still has some useful links, mostly on security and hacking tools and security standards. Contributions are welcome–just go to the appropriate area and click the “add a site” link at the top of the page. ...

During my long plane flights this week, I used some of my time to catch up on reading back issues of The Economist. Here were a few of the stories I found particularly interesting in the January 6-12, 2007 issue: “Medicine at the Top of the World” (p. 65): LYING in an intensive-care ward is a world away from climbing Everest, but a connection will be drawn this spring when 45 scientists and 208 volunteers tackle the mountain to bring back information about oxygen deprivation. The reason they are going is that hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in cells, which can lead to death) is the one thing that links practically all patients in intensive-care wards—and there is no better place to study it than in the thin air of the world’s highest mountain.The story describes the Xtreme Everest expedition, which will take 250 people up Mount Everest, setting up mobile labs at various elevations to study hypoxia. The volunteers will climb up to 5,300 meters, and 16 climber-scientists will ascend to the summit to become the first to have blood drawn at the top of the world’s tallest mountain. The research will be used to try to identify the genetic basis of people’s ability to handle hypoxia, which couldn’t be easily be conducted on patients in intensive care due to not having enough of them in one place at the right time. “The logic of privacy” (pp. 65-66): ...

The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the “Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007” would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government. Slashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue. Specifically, Section 220 required “paid grassroots lobbying firms” to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that “is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period." The Captain’s Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my “Fundamentalism is Nonsense” pamphlet (6th edition, 1986): Richard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday). Viguerie’s efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20. ...

At Slate, Jack Shafer argues for the abolition of the FCC, drawing heavily from Peter Huber’s book, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace. For a critique of Huber, see Tom W. Bell’s “The Common Law in Cyberspace” from the Michigan Law Review (1999, vol. 97, pp. 1746ff). (Hat tip to Jesse Walker at the Reason blog.)

Those of you who read this previous blog entry about Gapminder may be interested to see that Google has collaborated with Gapminder to produce this tool. (Hat tip to Radley Balko.)

The second clue in Microsoft’s “Vanishing Point” puzzle to launch Microsoft Vista will be unveiled at 4 p.m. Saturday in Phoenix, which they say was chosen for “high visibility and clear skies.” Promised is “a stunt that everyone in the Valley [will] be talking about by Saturday night." Perhaps a UFO flying over South Mountain with the Microsoft logo on it? UPDATE (January 13, 2007): It was supposed to be simultaneous sky-writing in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sydney, but I’m not sure if it happened in Phoenix as scheduled–today was a very overcast and cold day.