BC Law IPTF Blog

Metacafe via Lifehacker:

Make a pair of noise-canceling headphones from a pair of sound-proof earmuffs (~ $20) and some old headphones.

The gist is you get the sound-proof earmuffs—think what people wear at shooting ranges—that are small and fold nice and compact, pop off the foam padding, then break apart your old, on-the-ear headphones, and pop the speakers right under the foam padding of the earmuffs. From the video, it looks great.

Problem is that it’s not “noise-canceling,” but it’s noise-reducing. The top noise-canceling headphones block out external noise but also use white noise to cancel out the noise that filters through. Furthermore, the quality of sound you get from your “new” headphones is limited to the sound of the old headphones you just tore apart. So, while it may fit the bill, you still might only get the bang for your buck.

How Stuff Works: How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?

The answer? About 714 lbs. of coal. Let’s say you don’t run that one light bulb non-stop, but only for about 10 hours. That’s still almost 300 lbs. of coal. I can very easily imagine that I at various locations and times run at least 100 watts of electricity through light bulbs at least 10 hours a day every day. That’s a lot of coal.

Also, here’s a link from How Stuff Works about how much energy a transformer pulls, regardless of whether the appliance is on or not.

Oh, and FYI: A Google search on “What the fuck is a what?” doesn’t result in anything informative.

From ArsTechnica: Poll: Americans don’t want net neutrality (or maybe they don’t know what it is)

A nationwide survey of 800 registered voters is being touted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation because it purports to show that Americans are not interested in net neutrality legislation. Calling proposed net neutrality “onerous,” the Committee’s press materials say that the poll makes it clear that Americans prefer “video choice” over such regulations.

The poll also found that many Americans have no idea what net neutrality is, or why they should care . . .

Maybe we just need another term to describe the concept. (I find the term “network neutrality” confusing. Perhaps something more loaded like “egalitarian networks” or “anti-entertainment bandwidth throttling” or “need-blind allocation” or “usage-tiered pricing.” Or “lobster pricing.”)

In the survey, the question was posed as a battle between network neutrality–ISPs can’t sell faster (or slower) bandwidth on a scaled pricing scale–and increased TV and video choice. A non-neutral network could, for example, charge YouTube’s streaming video more for their bandwidth, and favor the ISPs cable network partner in allocating bandwidth to the TV set. It’s like paying more per pound for the larger lobster at the lobster pound.

It’ll be exciting to see more decisions being made in Congress by people who don’t even try to understand, like what happened with the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act.

Update: ValleyWag comments on this in a less-formal manner: Feature: Congress says “fuck you” to Net Neutrality with blatant pro-big-business push poll.

The Berry Amendment (10 U.S.C. sec. 2533a) requires that certain supplies purchased by the U.S. Dept. of Defense be sourced domestically from start to finish. But what may actually be happening is that essential supplies such as electronics and clothing must be withheld, because of these source restrictions, from much-needed areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

One issue with the Berry Amendment is that it restricts the sources of “specialty metals” to wholly domestic suppliers. A problem with this is that the manufacture of some integrated circuits (”ICs”) deposits trace amounts of titanium, a “specialty metal,” in the component. It is nearly impossible to discover the source of this titanium through the chain of suppliers, and therefore IC suppliers cannot know whether they are Berry-compliant or not.

ICs are everywhere, in nearly every electronic component. And Berry is specific that no exception can be made for electronics and communications equipment in aircraft, missile and space systems, ships, tank-automotive, weapons, and ammunition.

Furthermore, there is the issue where certain foreign countries can source specialty metals from non-US suppliers, defeating the pro-domestic industry intent of Berry. For example, a French manufacturer can source titanium from Russia, but a US manufacturer can only source titanium from a US-based supplier.

The Defense Contract Mgmt. Agency (”DCMA”) issued interim guidance that suppliers may withhold the cost of lowest auditable non-compliant specialty metal part against the cost of the contract. I.e., if a set of non-compliant screws costs $1 and the entire component is $10, then the contract can be sold for $9 each component. But since the titanium in ICs is difficult to audit, the lowest auditable part may be the entire IC.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 includes a section advising flexibile interpretation of the Berry restrictions, but it may take more legislation to ensure that components such as ICs can make it to places such as the Middle East conflict zone.

Ethan Zuckerman writes regarding generativity:

Much of the great creativity we’ve seen on the web has happened on the server side, not the client side. I think some users will move to less flexible devices than conventional PCs, but will contribute to the diversity of the Internet by creating original text, pictures, audio and video - so long as they’re able to create this content and share it online, I’m less worried about whether the devices they use to edit and upload it are arbitrarily programmable or not.

(Regarding Jonathan Zittrain’s recent article on generativity and securing the “grid”–summarized well on a Nicholas Carr blog post.)

I like the idea of streamlining the tools of “generativity” to a low common denominator. Thinking about creating content in a developing world context, an appliance that allows users to take pictures, write captions, and upload them to a blog–aggregated by something like Ethan’s Global Voices–is just enough to get important (if not at least flavorable) ideas and participation online.

And maybe that’s all you need to encourage greater generativity. If you lower the barriers to participation–and also increase the barriers to PC-destruction (see virii and malware)–then we’ll see more voices online. Think of an even more reduced Palm Pilot with a camera and microphone.

I shudder when I say this, but then think of a MySpace that accepts content from these Palm Pilots via e-mail. But then you can have children walking around, taking pictures or video, with audio or text narration, unpacking their daily experiences.

In much fewer words, that’d be dope.