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Internet access IS a human right

Posted: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:16:48 +0000
Technology and philosophy have been at the center of more debates lately than ever before. It's clear that technology is advancing faster than anyone would have imagined a decade ago, while an argument could be made that the philosophies that brought the world this far are starting to regress to less-civilized times. In the question of whether or not internet access is a human right or simply a privilege, technology and philosophy collide dramatically. The arguments that Vinton G. Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist and a prominent computer scientist recognized as a "father of the Internet," makes in his article titled "Internet Access Is Not a Human Right" are quite compelling. He states that "technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself." It's a "gotcha" statement that sidesteps the perception of those fighting for more internet rights based upon the tremendous role the web played in uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. In essence, his statement and the whole article attempts to reason with supporters of the United Nations report that declares internet access is, indeed, a human right. He acknowledges that the internet was critical but that calling it a human right or even a civil right is taking it too far. I disagree. There's no need to try to redefine what "human rights" are. According to Wikipedia, human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." This fits in well today just as it fit when the term was introduced in the 18th century. The question really comes down to delivery of rights. Rather than trying to play around with semantics, we should be looking at the results of the last couple of years and make the determination based upon three questions:
1. Is it possible in the near future to create an infrastructure that would make internet access available to nearly everyone in the world?
2. Would making internet access available worldwide to the vast majority of people foster positive changes in every culture and every society?
3. Are those without internet access less able to prosper?
The answer to number 1 is definitely yes, though not without challenges. Number 2 is debatable but recent history would have most leaning towards the affirmative. Number 3 is a personal philosophical question, but again the general perception is also affirmative here. Technology is an enabler as Cerf states. In many cases, it's also a right; the two statuses are not mutually exclusive. He uses the example that owning a horse once made making a living easier, where the horse was the enabler and making a living was the human right. Technology is not a horse. The internet is not a horse. Only a small percentage of people owned a horse while a large percentage were able to make a living. It's not a coincidence that there seems to be a new uprising against oppression around the world every other month. Oppression isn't new. The desire to end oppression isn't new. The ability to organize, communicate, and learn using the internet is the only thing that has been added to the equation. There have been more successful uprisings against powerful government entities in the last two years than in the past 50 years prior. Downplaying the importance and amazing abilities of the internet to improve the human condition is dangerous. In this case, I'm siding with the United Nations (something that I don't do very often). Vaulting the internet to the highest plateau as a true human right is the right step towards ending more than just oppression worldwide. It's a step towards increased opportunity, improved education, and the end of hostilities based upon ignorance. It's an element much like medicine that should fall into the same category. As an exercise in comparison, take the words internet access out of the three questions above and replace them with access to medication. Most would agree that access to medication is a human right, but even it has basically the same answers when inserted into those questions. Number 1: yes, though not without challenges. Number 2: debatable but most would lean towards the affirmative. Number 3: personal with a general perception of affirmative. The statement that Cerf is trying to make is that technology and the internet are means to an end, not the ends themselves. He's correct. That doesn't mean that they should be considered human rights. On the contrary, the discovery that giving people a tool that they can use to dramatically improve their lives should be used to rally support for the goal of giving everyone everywhere the ability to use the most profound technological breakthrough in decades. If the United Nations declaring that internet access should be a human right is the way to make it a reality, then we shouldn't be tinkering with the semantics of the statement. We should be striving to make it a reality.
Fighting America’s "Brain Drain"

Posted: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:13:55 +0000

The new global economy isn’t defined by the battle for the newest machines or precious ore, but a battle of ideas. Not ideas like concepts, fantastic new technologies, or complex economic models, but innovators and inventors--thinkers and entrepreneurs. With world markets shaky and the United States standing on the brink of a double dip recession, the country is suffering from brain drain: talented, well-educated college graduates, finding dismal opportunities domestically, are seeking their fortune abroad. Silicon Valley isn’t just in California anymore; it can be found in fledgling creative centers in China. Or India. Or Russia. But the U.S. is working to combat recession-fueled brain drain and entrepreneurial flight. Among the government’s policies is the H-1B program. U.S. businesses use H-1B visas to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, such as scientists, engineers, or computer programmers. The logic is simple: what if the next Steve Jobs is deprived of a chance to navigate—and potentially bolster—America’s economy? What about the next Elon Musk? Or Peter Thiel? Or Bill Gates? Immigrants who come to the United States to study at the best universities and then go to work at the nations leading companies (or most vibrant startups) contribute directly and immediately to America’s global economic competitiveness. Highly-skilled immigrants who have started their own high-tech companies have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and achieved company sales in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Immigrants founded 1 in 4 of the publicly traded companies created between 1990 and 2005. Prominent companies founded by immigrants and their families include Intel, Solectron, Sun, eBay, Yahoo, and Google. And foreign nationals in U.S. were inventors or co-inventors of 25 percent of all patents filed in U.S. in 2006. Immigrants have founded 52 percent of Silicon Valley’s companies and created millions of American jobs. “We heard from the entrepreneurs in the community and they articulated a concern that there are not adequate avenues for the best and brightest students who come here to the U.S. for education to remain here in the U.S. to use the skills and knowledge they have gained for the good of this country,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas in October “What we see is an exodus instead. We educate and we train, and because the access is not available to them, they leave and they contribute to other countries.” The H-1B visa, however, is in high demand, and legal and economic pressures have made competition fierce. At the beginning of each fiscal year in October, the USCIS begins making visas available, though it starts accepting applications from employers six months prior. There are only 65,000 ‘cap-subject’ H1B visas available each fiscal year, distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. While the number of visas approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services generally exceeds the statutory cap implemented by law, the number of approvals has been gradually shrinking since the beginning of the financial crisis. In 2008, a total of 276,252 visa applications (initial, renewals and extensions) were approved; in 2009, that number decreased slightly to 214,271 while 110,367 initial H-1B visas were issued from consular offices. The USCIS reached its FY2012 statutory cap of H1B visas by November 22, 2011, barely two months into the fiscal year. Demand for H-1B has increased, despite America’s economic woes, while the USCIS has approved less and less. Despite the benefits of allowing specialized workers to emigrate to the U.S., the H-1B program, like all immigration laws, is far from cut and dry. Critics cite wage depression, hidden costs, and risks for employers and employees as major problems. The United States General Accounting Office found in a report in 2000 that controls on the H-1B program lacked effectiveness, despite the fact that the average education level of applicants has gradually increased over the past decade. The most common complaint is one you’ll probably hear on the campaign trail during the 2012 election cycle: that immigrants come to the United States and take high-paying jobs from hard-working Americans, working for less (some studies have found that H-1B workers are paid significantly less than U.S. workers). With heavy competition for H-1B visas, staffing agencies usually help match applicants with a potential job; for example, Interfysio help internationals who are searching for occupational therapist jobs in new york acquire these visas. These international staffing and recruiting agencies work with immigration attorneys who have experience in obtaining these highly sought after visas. Other ventures have taken more creative, sometimes drastic, approaches to getting around the cap on visas: Blueseed, a sea steding endeavor started by Silicon Valley founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija, is looking to be the “Googleplex of the sea,” a sea-based tech incubator nestled safely in international waters, outside of jurisdiction and the legal caps on H-1B immigration visa. Each year, many American employers, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, lobby Congress to raise the H-1B cap, stating that it is too restrictive and companies cannot hire the workers they need. In his testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology, Gates argued that the shortage of trained scientists and engineers in America has grown so severe that it necessitated a dramatic increase in the number of highly-skilled immigrants permitted to enter the country, and that the current limit of 65,000 H-1B visas per year "bears no relation to the U.S. economy's demand for skilled professionals.” Gates is right. Increasing the H-1B cap is certainly not an immediate fix for America’s economic woes—with high unemployment, political deadlock, and a looming double dip recession, policy-makers are searching for short-term strategies to jumpstart the flagging economy. 49.1 million Americans live in poverty and 25.4 million workers are unemployed, involuntarily working part-time, or marginally attached to the workforce. Twenty-nine months after the recession officially ended, the economy is barely sputtering ahead at a 2 percent annual rate. But some economists believe that today's grinding unemployment and slow growth are masking the transition to a vibrant digital economy. If the advanced economies of the world are enduring a painful transition from one era (industrial) to another (post-industrial), the United States would do well to foster a vibrant technology sector. America no longer needs the best drills and biggest machines, but the sharpest minds in the world to continue to be an entrepreneurial beacon for the entire world.
How Digg left its tech geek roots behind and embraced the mainstream

Posted: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:55:00 +0000
I was struck by something when I began reading Digg's list of its "Ten stories you'll be sorry you missed this year."
None of the stories had anything to do with tech. Oh, how times have changed. When Digg launched in 2004, it was almost completely a tech site, much like its predecessor, Slashdot. It was a place where people shared, commented and voted on the latest and greatest stories in tech and science. Part of the reason Digg quickly expanded its reach is because it did grow beyond its roots. By 2007, the Offbeat category was extremely popular and memes and quirky humor was as much at home on the site as anything else. Categories included politics and sports and others far removed from the site's roots, but they were sparsely populated. The biggest controversy in 2007, in fact, was the initial deletion of posts that included the now-infamous DVD decryption code that caused a complete user revolt and the eventual capitulation of site founder Kevin Rose, who posted the following to the site's blog:
“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”
The majority of folks on Digg came for the tech and science and stuck around to check out other stuff. As 2007 wore on and the campaigning began to heat up for the 2008 elections, political submissions began to climb steadily. By 2008, politics were almost as important on the site as tech. After the election was over, it remained an important part of the focus among Diggers, and both liberal and conservative diggers would engage in flame wars in comments, each accusing the other of burying their chosen stories. Quietly, sports bloggers had been coming to Digg more to seek out new sources of traffic. Environmental-focused sites found a lot of support from Digg, as the relation between environment, science and tech was a natural fit. By this time, there was no real sort of content that was out of place on Digg (other than straight-up spam, of course) and there was great variety to be found in submissions. Old-school Diggers would complain in comments from time to time that certain submissions didn't belong there, on a tech site, but their efforts to keep Digg "pure," so to speak, were fruitless. Among the changes wrought by 2010's Digg Version 4 was a new focus on newsrooms. The newsrooms were part of a strong effort Digg management made in the months following the much-criticized launch to make fixes to appeal to their userbase. Diggers flocked to the newsrooms. Technology still has the largest single number following - 11,363 as of this writing - but some of the other most-popular newsrooms are far from the site's original demographic, such as Entertainment (5,724), Business (5,637) and World News (5,803). Other top newsrooms include Science, Apple, Google and Facebook, but other than Science, most don't get a lot of submissions. And so, the list of 2011 stories from Digg - it includes some of the most popular stories on the site, but specifically not those that were huge (inter)national news. There's no death of Steve Jobs, capture of Osama Bin Laden, the Japanese tsunami or nuclear meltdown.
A few of these stories - Roswell, or the colander-wearing atheist - might have been right at home on Digg in early days, mostly because of their geek cred. But this ain't your mother's Digg. It's a Digg for the masses.
Apps are rising on Windows Phones. Should they be taken more seriously?

Posted: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:00:07 +0000

I'll never forget when my boss at the time showed me his shiny new Windows Phone. I liked the interface, the feel of the hardware itself, and the responsiveness of the internet even on the (dreaded) AT&T network. I nodded politely and congratulated him on his bold move away from the norm (something that he does often). I figured he'd have an iPhone or Android to replace it by the end of 2011. It wasn't the technology. It was the apps. I didn't believe at the time that Microsoft was being aggressive enough encouraging developers to fill their marketplace the way that Android had. iOS needed no encouragement - developers flooded it early and never stopped - but Android needed a little coaxing in the early days to get developers on board. Microsoft showed no signs of being as proactive. Then, something changed. In August, as WebOS started looking like it was going crumble, Microsoft did something that I hadn't seen them do before with their mobile OS division. They reached out. It's subtle. It's minor. It's also the thing that made me change my mind. Maybe Microsoft had grown a pair and was going to make a real play to stay in the lucrative mobile game beyond 2012. Now that 2012 is upon us, they just passed the 50,000 apps mark, something that even the hopeful didn't expect to happen before 2012. The skeptical such as myself weren't sure it would ever happen. At a rate of 265 new items added per day, they're actually pacing faster than Android in the early days and aren't too far behind iOS. It took iOS 12 months to hit the mark while Android did it in 19 months. Windows Phone apps did it in 14 months. Is the future of Windows Phone set? Pretty much, yes. There is enough room in the industry for 3 major players and BlackBerry is looking like a has-been lately. They won't catch up with Android or iOS any time in the near (or distant) future but then again, they never expected to. This is a supplement to their core business, one that has a lot of potential benefits even 3rd on the list. The key is going to be their ability to get to a solid #3 as quickly as possible. The world is still using BlackBerry and Microsoft hasn't done enough yet to be a consideration for most people entering the smartphone segment or making a switch from their current provider, but that could change. If they do something crazy like buying RIM in the future, it may be enough to make their presence in this race permanent.
Google+ predicts that it will have 400 million users by end of 2012

Posted: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:15:21 +0000

They just passed 62 million users by adding 625,000 new users per day. Now, Google+ is predicting that they will have over 400 million users by the end of 2012. Are the numbers reliable? Some say no. Not really. Those who sign up through Android 4 must create or attach their Google+ account whether they intend to use it or not. At last count, there were nearly 700,000 Android devices activated daily. For their part, Google is attributing the holidays, recent television commercials that they've been running since Thanksgiving, and celebrity brand appeal for their success. Still, many tech bloggers are wondering, with the apparent mass appeal that Google is claiming, why haven't we seen more of our own friends and family on the service? We see them all on Facebook every day, but receiving a notification from Google+ is normally something that is closer akin to notifications from Twitter - random people who we don't really know. A friend who is being followed by around 3000 people on Google+ told me earlier today that he was posting every day but only found 3 or 4 of his friends on the site and using it often. This, compared to 400 Facebook friends made up of people who he knew with nearly half of them posting weekly at the least, left him wondering if Google+ was really being adopted or if it was just having numbers inflated by curiosity and Android activiations. Time will tell how successful Google+ will be compared to Facebook or whether it needs to compete with Facebook at all. Integration into other Google services is already giving it a lift in value for things other than social networking. If they're able to crack the business side of social networking and integrate advertising, there may be no need to for them to be as used as Facebook. Google's history in making money off ads may make Google+ a success even if most pictures of last night at the bar remain on Mark Zuckerberg's site.
Taliban on Twitter: How congressional attempts to block them is asinine on 2 levels

Posted: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:47:20 +0000

Twitter is used by different people for different things. It's a communication tool for some, a news aggregator for others, and a way to spread a message for individuals and groups around the world. From the perspective of the US government, it can be a beacon of freedom as well as a source of international intelligence, which is why it makes no sense that Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman is leading the charge to have Twitter block propaganda being spread by Islamic extremists. The Senator cites a portion of the Twitter terms of service that states, "You may use the Services only if you can form a binding contract with Twitter and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States or other applicable jurisdiction." Many of the Twitter accounts targeted by the Senator are run by organizations with the terrorist designation. At the heart of the push is the idea that Twitter can be used to not only spread anti-American propaganda but that it can also be used as a recruiting tool to garner support in the West. The precedent was set in 2008 when Google complied with Lieberman's push to have terrorist videos removed and blocked from YouTube. On the surface, the two seem linked. Both Twitter and YouTube are social media sites. They are being used by terrorists to spread hate and fear. The terms of service for both sites support Lieberman's case. If you dig deeper, you'll see that there are two reasons why pushing Twitter to block the accounts is the wrong move from a practical perspective.

Beacon of freedom
The YouTube incident was based around offensive content and the argument was an easy one to make for Lieberman. Graphic videos were being spread on the site that depicted the worst events imaginable - beheadings, torture, rape, and other evils that the terrorists were performing. It was designed to scare people around the world. It worked. It was the content that drew the attention of the government and the world. It had to be stifled. The argument for Twitter to censor accounts is completely different. They aren't targeting content. They are targeting accounts. With YouTube, it didn't matter who was posting. What mattered is what was being posted. A US citizen who posted the content would fall under the same scrutiny and be met with the same results. Targeting accounts sets a different, more sinister type of precedent. It isn't what they're saying. It's who is saying it. That's the point of contention and it's one that goes against the beacon of freedom that America is (was) trying to be. Attempts to block users who have an opinion that differs from the US government is a dangerous direction to head. When does it stop? Where is the line drawn? Offensive content is subjective but much easier to judge. Offensive accounts pushes the boundaries towards blanket censorship. What if an account operated by a US citizen starts spouting anti-American propaganda? Would retweeting a post by a member of an organization designated as a terrorist by the US government be grounds to label that individual as a terrorist? Should they be blocked or banned? If they were going after the content, they would still be wrong on a different level of censorship, but at least they would remain consistent with the precedent they set with YouTube. This attempt to block accounts based upon who they claim they are and the messages they are spreading will open the doors to further interpretations that would put individual tweets under scrutiny. This is the wrong way to try to defend America and promote the concepts of freedom. More importantly, they would be giving up on an extremely valuable intelligence tool.

Twitter for intelligence
The lines drawn between censorship and national security are blurred depending on which side of the argument you're on. The potential for using Twitter to gather intelligence is clear and indisputable. Rather than trying to stifle the Taliban and other organizations from using Twitter, they should be embracing it, collecting it, and using it to plant false intelligence as well as learning more about counterintelligence. It would not be very hard or expensive to track the activities, gather photos, and find the locations of supporters of these organizations. People make mistakes. Scanning through the followers of one of the Twitter accounts named by Lieberman yielded a wealth of data. You could see when people inadvertently posted their geo-location. There were pictures of people who were killed as "puppets". There were people being named as spies and sympathizers. In some cases, it was clear by the responses that the information wasn't supposed to be posted out in the open. This, of course, goes points us towards a slippery slope of privacy concerns. Any call for the government to use the information we post to track us has potential dangers, but I'm a firm believer that if you don't want the government or anyone else to know something, don't post it on Twitter or Facebook. Allowing terrorists and their potential supporters to use Twitter has so many more potential benefits to fighting terror than drawbacks that it's a no-brainer for Lieberman to switch directions. There is a treasure trove of intelligence to be gathered. Trying to shut them down because they are spreading propaganda is shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding of how Twitter and the internet work. Terrorists on Twitter is a gift horse. Stop looking it in the mouth.
GoDaddy lost 72,354 domains this week. It's not enough.

Posted: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:49:40 +0000

Despite a massive Twitter campaign and a blog post that claims "Go Daddy no longer supports SOPA legislation" the company and their CEO have dodged questions about opposing the bill. In essence, they are taking a lesser role by not showing support for the bill. They have not opposed it. This week, they lost around 72,000 domain registrations. At a yearly discounted rate of $6.99 (most registrations are higher), that's over half a million dollars per year. It is apparently not enough for them to speak out against the bill. Everyone from large corporations like Google down to local businesses like Dodge Seattle are voicing concern about the legislation. "We are watching this subject very closely and looking at what domain changes will need to be made because of GoDaddy's support of this legislation," said Jon Sherrell at Rairdon. How many domains is the company willing to lose before they oppose this abomination of legislation? Do they believe that when they "step back and let others take leadership roles" that we are going to see it as something other than a "duck and cover" public relations move to try to get out of the spotlight and hope someone else takes the brunt of the attacks while they quietly support the bill? Is 72,354 domains enough? Not even close. It's a drop in the bucket. The have anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000 domains added daily. Despite cries from the internet, yesterday was a good day with over 32,000 added. Go Daddy has not felt much pain yet. The "PR nightmare" that many of us in the tech industry perceive is happening to them hasn't hit their pocketbooks in any real form, yet. Until the effect is more pronounced, they can afford to deflect questions and let the negative PR pass. More must be done.
The social media disruption of advertising (is a good thing)

Posted: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:50:42 +0000

The internet took us by storm and changed the way we live our lives. Social media came along and had nearly the same type of impact. In business, it could be argued that social media is the biggest paradigm-shifting element that has come along in a decade, even more important than ecommerce. Has the way that we use social media completely changed the way that we see and interact with advertising? We certainly hope so. Advertising a business has always been about broadcasting a message to a wide-range of people. It's always been about exposure, branding, and penetration. Today, thanks to social media, there's a new element that was once very minor but that has taken center stage in nearly every level of advertising: sentiment. Today, businesses can no longer advertise simply for the sake of getting out their message. It just doesn't work as well. They have to take social media into account when crafting their message and the methods through which they're able to broadcast it. Then, they have to be pro-active and conscious about the sentiment online to make sure that their message isn't missing the point, striking the wrong cords, or touching the wrong nerves. Take the Motrin ad from a couple of years ago: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmykFKjNpdY[/youtube] This was an absolute debacle and could be considered a case-study about how not to anger the social media masses. This was launched (and removed immediately) over 2 years ago. Imagine how it would have played today. Keeping social media in mind from a business perspective is no longer a side-endeavor. It's not something that businesses of any size can simply pawn off on the tech-savvy nephew of the accountant. It must be considered through every move, particularly advertising. This infographic by our friends at MDG Advertising breaks down some of the things to consider when looking at social media and its effects on advertising. Click to enlarge. (H/T: Social News)
Who will buy T-Mobile now?

Posted: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:25:41 +0000

The unraveling of the AT&T merger with T-Mobile was not entirely bad for the fourth largest mobile carrier in the US. They get $3 billion. It isn't enough to keep them afloat for more than a year or two, but it does buy them time to find someone else. It gives them time to formulate a plan-B. Unfortunately, they don't know what plan-B is for them. It was shortsighted of Deutsche Telekom to go into this without a plan-B. Putting all of one's eggs in a single basket makes no sense when so much as at stake. The company has to regroup quickly. First, they have to make themselves valid by improving the infrastructure. AT&T had it already so there was no need to focus on building up. That, of course, didn't work out. “In the long term, we need more spectrum and network capacity," said Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann. "We are working on that. But we will not speculate about any inorganic steps or deals.” They might not be willing to speculate but the rest of us will. We have to. The company thinking "long term" by improving their own infrastructure is not really thinking at all. If anything, they are simply trying to increase their own value by such actions. “Stabilization is the first step and then it’s about finding a new partner in the medium term,” said Wolfgang Specht, an analyst at WestLB AG in Dusseldorf. “In the long run a standalone strategy seems impossible. Everything from here on is only a second-best solution.” Who can fly in and be the valid second-best solution? Here are some possibilities:
Sprint
It's hard to imagine a situation in which the government would block one carrier from buying T-Mobile only to allow another later, but if they would be willing to do it, Sprint is the only option. It would be a last resort; the goal is to have 4 major carriers, not 3. Sprint, being a distant third behind AT&T and Verizon, would be an alternative better than losing the T-Mobile option altogether. There have been technical incompatibilities that have prevented the two from working together in the past, but this has become less of a challenge with recent upgrades to the infrastructure and software. Is this a likely scenario? No. Is it feasible? Yes. Is it desirable? To current Sprint customers, probably not as T-Mobile brings little in the way of value other than spectrum. It has a weak 4G network, and therein lies the more likely scenario: a partnership between the two companies that keeps them separate but that gives them strength against AT&T and Verizon. In this scenario, there would still need to be a buyer for T-Mobile, which could be...
Dish Network Corp
Dish is in an odd position. On one side, it's being named as a possible acquisition target for AT&T. On the other end, they are a possible buyer or partner with T-Mobile. At the center of their situation is billions of dollars worth of wireless spectrum they acquired earlier this year as part of deals for bankrupt DBSD North America Inc. For AT&T, they represent a consolation prize. Shares jumped 9.1% yesterday behind those rumors. Buying or partnering with T-Mobile is an option for putting their spectrum assets to work because of the relative weakness the company has exposed. It would mean jumping into one of the most competitive industries out there and starting from way behind the leaders, but if the deal is good enough, why not? Many look at their involvement as a waiting game. Their value in AT&T or Verizon's eyes will only go up as time passes while T-Mobile's goes down. If they wait too long or decide to get gobbled up rather than being the gobbler, the long-shot companies might step in grab T-Mobile for the sheer value. Those long-shot companies include...
Google, Amazon, and the other usual suspects
Google is already partially in the mobile game from every angle other than carrier. They bought Motorola Mobility. They have Android. Why not complete the set? Amazon is a company that's always looking for value and T-Mobile at a low-enough price might be enough to get them interested. Facebook has cash and nowhere to spend it. They've expressed a desire to get into the mobile business and their relationship with Skype puts them in a position to put a T-Mobile to good use. Apple, Sony, and Microsoft have to be in the conversation because they always are despite the fact that it simply won't happen. Who will buy T-Mobile? Someone has to. The company is unable to stand alone. In the end, it will come down to value. AT&T was able to offer more than the company was worth for market-share needs, but nobody else other than Verizon (which would get blocked faster than AT&T was) would have an interest in a $39 billion T-Mobile. The option that nobody is talking about is the government itself. An auto-industry-style bailout would be required before the company would be allowed to fail simply because the repercussions would rock the industry as a whole. Thousands of jobs, sold off infrastructure, a "meddling government" tag that Washington can't afford; if nobody comes in and saves T-Mobile, we could conceivably see a government-owned entity. If the government took control of a portion of mobile, the conspiracy theorists would go insane.
From upgrading genetic code to reducing the cost of crime: why early childhood education is so important

Posted: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:27:26 +0000

Asking why childhood education is important is like asking why oxygen is useful. The benefits are obvious, but the best thing about smart educated people is that they don’t just say things are obvious and then leave it - they do scientific studies to check. Here are just a few of the amazing benefits of early childhood education, and how starting early really makes a big difference, and how all of those differences prove to be extra positive.

1. Reducing The Cost Of Crime
Early childhood education doesn’t just elevate the human race, it’s cost-effective. Those aren’t concepts you often find together, but education is just that good. The Perry program investigated the effects of high-quality preschool programs on disadvantaged children. A few hours of education at ages 3 and 4 yielded lifelong results. Forty years later, those benefiting from early education were found to be more intelligent, higher-earning, and with fewer criminal problems. On top of an increased quality of life for the person, the program saved money for the state. Police estimates put the money saved at $180,000 per student. Because police time is expensive. Court time is expensive. Jail is extremely expensive, because it’s food board and armed reverse-servants for every prisoner. (Reverse-servant: someone employed to prevent you doing things instead of to do things for you.) Instead of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into punishing people, spend just a few of those thousands on educating them in the first place.

2. Upgrading Genetic Code
Cutting edge research released this month shows that education doesn’t just affect your brain - it can rewire your entire being. A school screwing around with genetic codes might sound like something out of the X-Men, or exactly like the X-Men, but the results aren’t things like laser eyes and lightning bolts. They’re improved health and quality of life which, when you think about it, are far better powers to have in the real world. The study “Associations with early-life socioeconomic position in adult DNA methylation” shows that early childhood conditions affect your epigenetic programming. Epigenetics are a layer of biochemical information controlling your DNA. If your genes are a book of instructions, you can think of epigenes as markers telling you which pages to read. The study found that changing conditions after age seven didn’t affect the epigenetic instructions in the same way - if you get the advantages early, you benefit from them forever.

3. Education Amplification
You can’t have too much of a good thing, especially education. Early childhood education has been shown to improve the effects of subsequent learning. The Harrisburg Preschool Program recently released results demonstrating how early education improved results all the way up to fifth grade, and they only stopped there because that’s how old the kids are now. Further improvements will doubtless be shown as soon as the children grow more! The conclusions of these studies are as inescapable as they are obvious. Humanity is designed to improve itself. Our hugely extended childhoods are based on our ability to learn and adapt to the environment. Tiger cubs quickly grow and leave home because “run, catch, kill, eat” might be strenuous but it’s not hard to learn the concept. Human children seem helpless for a decade or more, but that’s because they’re spending all their energy learning how to deal with this world. If they find themselves in a world of watching TV, playing games, and drinking soda, they will adapt to that by becoming fat and lazy. If the find a world full of information, where thinking leads to improved rewards, then they’ll develop into people to take advantage of that.