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Thursday, November 27, 2003
City of Fredericton Goes Wireless
Fredericton, New Brunswick has become the first city in Canada to offer municipality-wide, free, unlimited Wi-Fi access. According to the city's official press release:
The first phase of the project has already been completed. This means that Wi-Fi technology is now available in much of the City's downtown and at the Fredericton Airport. By the end of the year the network will be expanded to include the Knowledge Park, Main Street and the balance of the downtown. In the future, coverage will include all of the City's business corridors and public spaces.
The City is teaming with Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, to deliver Fred-eZone. Cisco is assisting in the roll out and development of the network, which is based on industry-leading Cisco wireless technology. The first phase of the project will cost $150,000 and is already part of the city’s capital budget for this year. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 3:54 PM
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Monday, November 24, 2003
Distributed computing
Aspen Leaf concepts has a lsit of Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects. These are, generally, programs like folding@home that you can download, run in the background of your computer, and help make a difference in the world at large. Do you know of any other distributed program lists? ::
posted by Jonathan Swerdloff, 2:58 PM
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Sunday, November 23, 2003
Lessig on Fiber Ownership
Lawrence Lessig on why municipalities should own the fiber networks that run through them, in the latest Wired:
For a long time now, the FCC has been pushing the idea that ownership matters. In the past four years, it has relaxed common-carrier-like regulations on cable and telecom providers on the theory that otherwise these companies won't have enough incentives to deploy broadband networks. Common-carrier regulations, this view fears, would transform IP traffic into a commodity. And capital markets aren't eager to fund commodity infrastructures. via BoingBoing ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 6:17 PM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Dude, Where's my AI?
Clive Thompson on artifical intelligence:
As I never tire of saying, artificial intelligence is most successful not when it aims high -- but when it aims low.
Computer scientists have tried for years to get a computer to talk intelligently about philosophy and art and politics. They've all failed. But what they don't realize is that this goal is kind of beside the point, because real-life humans themselves almost never talk about philosophy and art and politics. No, we mostly just sit around yelling "wazzup" and "right on" at each other. To emulate a human realistically, you don't have to realistically capture the empyrean majesty of our imaginations. All you have to do is program a 'bot to goof around and flip people off. That is, after all, what most of us do, 90% of the day. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 2:24 PM
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Monday, November 17, 2003
The State of Play
The State of Play Conference on "Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds" recently concluded at the New York Law School. The very clued in Greg Costikyan has posted his presentation on political speech in games.
Unrelated, but fascinating nontheless is Greg's essay on Chess that he posted on his blog a few days ago. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 9:54 PM
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Saturday, November 15, 2003
E-voting Coverage
Wired News has gone all out with their coverage of e-Voting, a topic Mindjack covered last August. Their "Machine Politics" section provides a great overview of this very important issue. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 6:13 PM
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CNET Aquires MP3.com
MP3.com announced yesterday that "certain assets of the company have been aquired by CNET Networks Inc. According to MP3.com, all content on their servers and all other user submitted media will be destroyed December 2. CNET plans to introduce a "new and enhaced artist service" shortly thereafter. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 5:31 PM
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Friday, November 14, 2003
Chasing Bush
The impending state visit to London by George W. Bush is coming under fire due to demands for the establishment of exclusionary zones wherever he visits. Scotland Yard says "We are not so concerned about some anti-war protester throwing rotten fruit at the President. Our worry now is the more dangerous elements who may be here." Link requires registration. A group of protestors decided that they would keep tabs on where the president is at all times whether such a zone is set up or not. Using email and text messages, the group is Chasing Bush.
(Crossposted at Smart Mobs) ::
posted by Jonathan Swerdloff, 8:42 PM
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
Bollywood Comes To Kazaa
CNET reports that Sharman Networks, the company behind the popular Kazaa filesharing software, has reached a deal to distribute the Bollywood feature "Suspari" on its P2P network. The Hindi-language film will be $2.99, with songs from the move 90 cents each. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 4:07 PM
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Monday, November 10, 2003
Clark Campaign Launches New Blogging, Community Tools
Wesley Clark's campaign for President today launched a new set of community and blogging tools called the Clark Community Network. Among other things, the system provides a personal blog for every user of forclark.com.
Wired News has a report. ::
posted by Donald Melanson, 7:08 PM
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