That’s TERAbytes October 15, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, Trends, What's New? , add a commentIan drools.
A nuts-and-bolts explanation by c|net:
With the new, elegantly named current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive heads (CPP-GMR heads to you laypeople), drive makers will be able to come out with 4 terabyte drives in 2011 and/or 1 terabyte notebook drives.
The CPP-GMR drive essentially changes the structure of drive heads. Current drives come with a tunnel magnetoresistance head. In these, an insulating layer sits between two magnetic layers. Electrons can tunnel through the layer. Precisely controlling the tunneling ultimately results in the 1s and 0s of data.
Ones and zeros indeed. This isn’t stopping anytime soon.
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Monday Blog Roundup
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, What's New? , add a commentMore content consolidation: Discovery acquires How Stuff Works for a reported $250 million. It’s apparently a step toward Discovery bringing its video library online — more bandwidth cholesterol, though if you know anything about both of these companies, its goooood cholesterol.
A great debate on Vonage’s place in communications history rages over at Realtime Community | Unified Communications. Garret Smith, through his own blog, takes the tack that we owe Vonage a “thank you.” David Beckmeyer, though, claiming the company “contaminated the VoIP investment pool back in 2003,” basically says “thanks but no thanks.”
Some sad news from O’Reilly: OET will be “winding down” publishing its blog, as well as canceling its 2008 ETel show. The blog was home to occasional diamonds of insight and I greatly enjoyed reading it throughout the week. As for the show, we have seen that trend toward less-ubiquitous trade shows, though I think it speaks well of NXTcomm that it was able to outstrip expectations last year and should do so again this year.
16 GB iPhone “MacRumors” are greatly exaggerated, according to engadget.
Retail broadband at Wal*Mart is a good thing, says Bruce Mehlman at IIA. As it does in consumer goods and prescription drugs, Wal*Mart’s price-cutting model will bring resold broadband to the masses, he argues.
Does new media ad money stop at the river’s edge for smaller players? Ed Sim seems to think so, and yahoo.com seems to agree.
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The Right Way to Regulate October 11, 2007
Posted by Grant Seiffert in : General , add a commentIn the sea of acronyms that is Washington’s regulatory world, it’s easy to become disenchanted with all the agencies, commissions, committees, working groups and think tanks, making regulatory decisions in what sometimes seems like a bubble. But there is a defining line between superfluous bureaucracy and effective governance, especially in a heavily-regulated industry like telecommunications.
Often the difference is as simple as bringing all players to the table on an issue and allowing them to work out a commonsense solution.
The Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee, or CMSAAC, is just the kind of working group that might sound like just another D.C. bureaucracy, especially when you hear it’s the product of a legislative mandate. But in fact, it has been very successful at achieving its main purpose — developing technical standards and protocols to help wireless carriers voluntarily transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers. What had once been a dicey and difficult issue with its share of controversies is now ready for rulemaking at the FCC, and CMSAAC was the key factor in shaping consensus.
Established as part of the Warning, Alert and Response Network Act (WARN Act), enacted by Congress in late 2006, CMSAAC consists of technical experts from the Commission, Public Safety, the wireless industry, and handset vendors. TIA is represented on the CMSAAC by Cheryl Blum, from Alcatel-Lucent.
The beauty of such a forum is that it can leverage the Commission’s resources and bring together the best and brightest minds to develop technically feasible standards and protocols, prior to the issuance of a mandate.
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As long as they keep selling us ringtones October 10, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentArena-rock band Nine Inch Nails became the latest high-profile rock veterans to jump from their record label this week. This follows Radiohead’s decision to not only jump ship but to offer a unique pricing structure for its latest effort. There have also been reports of second-tier-but-still-big acts Oasis and Jamiroquai may follow. To quote investor Rick Aristotle Munarriz, “unsigned is the new signed!”
Of course, this kind of move is only applicable to big acts with sizeable fan bases. To cite a recent Chicago Tribune piece on Radiohead’s big jump:
“Radiohead’s developed a pretty good brand name over the years,” says Bertis Downs, R.E.M’s manager. “They’re in a position where, of course, they can do something like this. And so could a few others — U2, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews. These are bands who benefited from the old system. But it’s not really applicable to reinventing the music business.”
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Peru Free Trade October 5, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentThe Senate Finance Committee on approved the U.S.-Peru trade agreement by voice vote Thursday, according to CongressDaily. The group’s tech pub, Tech Daily (subscription only), in addition to be the focus of this week’s Network, picks up the Peru story:
Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said this week that the full Senate will not act on the deal until the House passes legislation to implement it, which is expected in late October or early November. Under the rules in which the agreement was reached, the trade deal may not be amended. “It has been nearly five months since the administration and Congress agreed on a framework on labor and environmental issues” in the deal, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a statement. “I am pleased that Congress is finally ready to vote on this important agreement.” The House vote will come only after passage of a bill to expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which offers job training to people who lose work from trade deals.
It’s probably the least controversial of the FTAs, but it’s a good sign that we’re not seeing any symbolic pushback against it. As more objective, third-party opinions come out in favor of the Korea FTA, hopefully, these less-contested FTAs will provide a springboard for future agreements. Already, we’ve seen some encouraging changes of mind on Korea.
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A Month Is Not Long
Posted by Grant Seiffert in : General , add a commentHere we are, already in October. It seems like only yesterday that I stepped into the office of TIA President (it was in January). The time has flown since we got the Telecom Act signed into law (that was in 1996). I won’t even start on when I first began as an assistant in the office of Senator McCain. One of the common threads in this town, as in our industry, is that time flies. Deadlines that once seemed so far off come and go before you know it. Hearings and markups — and long-expected auctions — barrel past us with ferocious speed.
Which is to say: a month is not a long time.
And a month is exactly how much time we have until the current moratorium on Internet access taxes expires on November 1. While three separate bipartisan bills, each of which would reinstall the tax ban, languish in Congress, none seems near a floor vote — let alone delivery to President Bush’s desk to be signed. Though there is general consensus among the key legislators and their constituents that this fall is hardly the time to experiment with new Internet access taxes and that they would hit hardest the very consumers Congress wants to help get better, faster broadband, none of the bills has yet made it through the process.
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