Tag Archives: Technology

Government, Media, Ruminations, Technology

NC Lottery: Powerball is powerless…

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11PM local news:

  • WTVD 11 leads with today’s Powerball snafu problems.
  • WRAL 5, after leading with nearly 4 minutes of ‘Canes news, covered the glitch.
  • NBC17, bless their hearts, led with about 5 minutes of ‘Canes game review and didn’t make it to the State’s newest con-game until 6 stories in .

NBC17 also deserves kudos for being the only station to mention the extremely long odds, 1 in 146 million, of winning the ‘ball.

WTVD was a bit breathless in their coverage – the news guy excitedly telling us “we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s drawing”.

WRAL played up the “inconvenience” people had waiting to squander their bucks.

I’m going to give WRAL a small break because they did a nice piece  on the expected correlation between counties with high unemployment and high ticket sales.

Wilson County has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the state and often ranks No. 1 in ticket sales per capita. Nine other North Carolina counties selling the most tickets per adult have unemployment rates above the state’s average.

“It is not unexpected,” said state Sen. Janet Cowell. “I think that is what other states that have lotteries have seen.” Cowell explained that is part of why she opposed the lottery all along.”It really is a regressive tax, essentially, that really impacts lower income communities, not higher income communities,” she said.

“I don’t think that has any conflict with us,” said Wilson County’s Employment Security Commission manager, Terri Williams. “We’re here to help them find work and to help them with unemployment until they can find work.”Williams believes continued fallout from several plant layoffs and seasonal tobacco cuts are more to blame, but admits, “Of course, we hate to see the poor spending money on lottery tickets.”

Yep, so today’s computer snafu isn’t the only glitch we’ve seen in the system.

Government, Ruminations, Technology

Can you hear me now? Not if you’re the FCC!

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Following in the footsteps of Bush’s Justice department, the FCC has thrown in the towel on further investigations of allege crimes by Bellsouth, Verizon and others.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will not pursue complaints about a spy agency’s access to millions of telephone records because it cannot obtain classified material, the FCC’s chairman said in a letter released on Tuesday.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, had asked communications regulators to investigate a newspaper report that AT&T Inc. (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Verizon Communications (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and BellSouth Corp. (BLS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) gave access to and turned over call records to help the National Security Agency fight terrorists.

“The classified nature of the NSA’s activities makes us unable to investigate the alleged violations,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in the May 22 letter to Markey.

Verizon and BellSouth have denied turning over telephone call records to the NSA. BellSouth has demanded USA Today retract claims in its story.

“We can’t have a situation where the FCC, charged with enforcing the law, won’t even begin an investigation of apparent violations of the law because it predicts the administration will roadblock any investigations citing national security,” Markey said in response to Martin.

Reuters

Nothing to see here. Move along, move along…

Government, Ruminations, Technology

That old family jalopy…

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We’re probably going to replace one of our vehicles in the near future. Hybrid or bio-diesel?

My brother has a Honda he gets great mileage out of… Toyota has the new Camry (a car I can comfortably sit in) and the established Prius. Consumer Reports, among others, have published reports showing that the advertised MPGs don’t always add up to a substantial savings.

Xan, over at FORTH GO, reports on his Prius experience, including mileage, covering the first 8 months of Prius ownership.

Thanks for the field report Xan.

CivilLiberties, Government, Ruminations, Technology

Fiber is Future Proof

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[ UPDATE: ]

One of the best forums I’ve attended in the last 6 years!

Kudos to Laurin for organizing the program, Casey, Lynda, Ray, Chad and Shannon! They all did fantastic presentations covering a broad range of muni-networking issues – NPO-model, governmental operational efficiencies, collaboration, school and community usage, etc.
[ Original Post: ]

The municipal networking forum has kicked off.

Casey Lide, of Baller Herbst , has started out with a broad overview of business models, technologies and reasons for municipal networking.

Casey brings up the “holy grail” of FTTH (fibre-to-the-home). It’s capital intensive, but as he says, “Fibre is future proof.”

Amen!

Plenty of room and plenty of time if you want to come down….

CivilLiberties, Government, Technology

Utility Commission on the ball…

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Kudos to the folks running our NC Utilities Commission!

When the USA Today story fingering Bellsouth’s complicity in the NSA scandal broke I called our North Carolina Utilities Commission to lodge a complaint. The receptionist told me a “consumer specialist” would call within the hour to get details about my case. “Sure,” I said, pretty much expecting I’d have to call back over several days to reach the right person – that’s what we’ve grown to expect from all levels of government, right?

Within the hour, I got that call. The gentleman was direct, knowledgeable and filed the complaint without hesitation. He also said he’d follow up with any developments.

Today he did.

The case has been forwarded to the FCC, which is acting as a clearinghouse for a number of states. In addition, my case will continue at the State level until resolved by the FCC investigation.

This level of competence and service by the Utility Commission folks gives me confidence that they’ll be able to handle any fastballs the communications monopolists throw Chapel Hill’s way as the community forges ahead on the municipal network project.

Government, Technology

Technology Board: Raymond, Party of One.

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Town IT lead Bob Avery and I constituted the sole attendance at tonight’s Technology Board swan song.

During the recently well-attended dissolution of the Horace-William’s Committee, the committee members wrangled out some excellent final advisory language for Council.

Tonight, the tech board was supposed to discuss and pass on 8 final recommendations/observations to Council. Most folks had already expressed their concerns about the “lame duckness” of our final efforts, but I thought we had a consensus on, as one member put it, “a way to wrap up things nice and neat.”

Maybe, as some suggested, it wasn’t worth the effort to advise, one last time, a Council that has generally failed to follow through on our recommendations they approved.

Maybe our Mayor’s recent dismissal of the importance of technology in the new town manager selection process doused the membership’s spirits.

Maybe it was just “board fatigue”.

While I don’t have a quorum to endorse those final thoughts, I’ll present them here for completeness when I get a copy.

CivilLiberties, Government, Ruminations, Technology

Bellsouth Back from the Abyss? Denies USA Today’s NSA Charges.

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Bellsouth denies USA Today charge, claims no sharing of records.

According to CNN and other news sources, Bellsouth denies USA Today’s claim that it participated in the massive NSA privacy breach.

In several reports, Bellsouth spokesman Jeff Battcher claims

Battcher said BellSouth’s customer service department had received only 26 complaints about reports that private phone records may have been relayed to the government.

26 sounds quite low, especially since I know 5 folk, including myself, that called when the story broke.

CivilLiberties, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

Bellsouth’s Billion Dollar Mistake

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[ UPDATE: ] Bellsouth denies USA Today charge, claims no sharing of records.

According to CNN and other news sources, Bellsouth denies USA Today’s claim that it participated in the massive NSA privacy breach.

In several reports, Bellsouth spokesman Jeff Battcher claims

Battcher said BellSouth’s customer service department had received only 26 complaints about reports that private phone records may have been relayed to the government.

26 sounds quite low, especially since I know 5 folk, including myself, that called when the story broke.

Verizon and ATT are still on the hook.
Continue reading Bellsouth’s Billion Dollar Mistake →

CivilLiberties, Government, Ruminations, Technology

Can you hear me now, NSA? Not if you’re the Justice Department.

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From CNN and the AP via AudioActivism and Daily Wireless.

X-posted from Brian Russel’s AudioActivism

Domestic spying inquiry killed

AP is reporting that the US Department of Justice has stopped its investigation of the warrantless phone spying done by the NSA at the approval of George Bush.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility] has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

We can’t depend on our Federal government’s law enforcers to corral Constitutional abuses.

Continue reading Can you hear me now, NSA? Not if you’re the Justice Department. →

Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

NextBus – The Proposal

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I’ve been reading through the town’s Request for Proposal (RFP) for our new Real-Time Passenger Information System and Automatic Vehicle Location system for Chapel Hill Transit.

There’s some interesting goofs (missing section 3.B.6) and specifications (Microsoft ODBC) in a document which appears to be a cut-n-paste of Triangle Transit, Federal and local requirements.

From the RFP we see

The System shall undergo functional testing onsite in a test environment for a minimum of 2 weeks prior to May 1, 2006. Confidence testing shall occur during production use of the System between May 1, 2006 and June 15, 2006. Every route must be assigned an equipped vehicle and data collected for comparison to the actual. CHT will issue written Acceptance of the System within 15 days of establishing that the System meets all contract requirements and upon completion of the Confidence testing period.

I’ve yet to see the actual results of the functional testing, the results of evaluating the RFP’s stated criteria (including the ADA requirements) and whether we solicited bids from vendors known to use WiFi/WiMAX technologies but probably not be aware of our town’s interest in their RTIS/AVL systems.

Ellen, over on OrangePolitics, wonders if NextBus will deliver digital signs with audio alerts for “a person who is blind gets there and tries to access then and cant read it or a person who cant read but can hear and understand verbal communication”.

While the RFP mentions ADA 49CFR Part 37.167 and 49CFR Part 38.5 , both which require some kind of audio notifications, we won’t know for sure if those requirements were adhered to as part of the evaluation process until we see the results of the functional testing.

It’ll be a shame if, on top of a wasted $950,000 opportunity, the town has to kick in extra funds to be ADA compliant.

Continue reading NextBus – The Proposal →

Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

NextBus Recap – The story so far…

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[UPDATE:] The proposal.

What would it take to build our own bus ETA notification and Internet hotspot system?

Twenty-four hours into blogging about the NextBus system, what have we learned? What’s the alternative? How large of an opportunity have we missed?

What have other folk said about NextBus?

Why is the town concerned about cellphone charges? What kind of deal did we make?

Alameda California’s ACTransit signed a deal with NextBus is January, 2006. Did we get as good a deal?

May 8th I had an opportunity to speak with one of the folk from ACTransit who negotiated their great deal.

ACTransit got for their $1M:

  • NEW: 54 signs, 125 vehicles, 13 routes
  • EXISTING: 46 signs, 74 vehicles, 12 routes
  • 7 years of support for their existing and new infrastructure.

Chapel Hill?

  • 14 signs, 83 vehicles, 26 routes, unknown warrantee.

What does the Daily Tar Heel have to say?

Why NextBus? What about the strange coincidence involving NextBus’ 2002 campaign contributions to Rep. Price?

[ UPDATE: ]

Bob Avery, the town’s IT director, came through this evening with additional documentation of the Real-Time Passenger Information System and Automatic Vehicle Location system for Chapel Hill Transit.

Media, Ruminations, Technology

SxSW 2006 – ae represents!

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The ratings for the 2006 South By Southwest Interactive panels are out.

Local ‘blogger ae, of arsepoetica fame, led the blogHer sponsored panel Increasing Women’s Visibility on the Web: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?

Score? 5.0 of 5.0!

Local ‘blogger ruby, of OrangePolitics and LotusMedia fame, kicked some butt with a highly respectable 4.32.

Ruby got kudos for her performance, besting fellow presenters DailyKos’ Markos Moulitsas and RedState’s Mike Krempasky.

Media, Ruminations, Technology

Practical Technology Activism

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AudioActivism’s Brian Russell has taken the best practical step to advancing work on the “digital divide” I’ve seen in awhile.

What has one of our great local technology activists done?

Created Chapel Hill Wireless, a site whose goals are:

…to help you find good wireless access points (aka WiFi) in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina.

…to promote the creation of more public wireless hotspots in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. (Carrboro seems to have a head start. :) )

By the way, Jason Baker, another 2005 Council candidate and technology advocate, took a practical step in community outreach by creating OrangePedia.org several months ago.

OrangePedia, a wiki collecting and collating information on Orange County, is still growing and the idea is catching on.