I recently got this message from Vista.
What, exactly, does Microsoft expect you to do about an "unspecified security risk?"
I recently got this message from Vista.
What, exactly, does Microsoft expect you to do about an "unspecified security risk?"
I recently made reference to a widely quoted World Bank report that claimed that 10 points per 100 in Internet penetration translates into 1.21% GDP growth - more for developing countries. One of my colleagues challenged me to show that this was causation and not correlation. There have been many studies on the effects of investments in transportation, energy, and telecommunications, and the the argument for a parallel effect on broadband deployment seems plausible, but tracking down the source of this statistic proved elusive. Most of the places that quoted this statistic cited an "unpublished report" by the World Bank, but I tracked down the author, Senior Economist Christine Zhen-Wei Qian and she was kind enough to send me the report.
The paper, Telecommunications and Economic Growth, starts be reviewing the extensive literature on the effects of improvements in various forms of infrastructure on economic growth in the late 20th century, which show a strong positive effect from wireline telecommunications in the 1970s and from mobile communications much later, especially in developing countries.
The analysis looked at the GDP growth in 120 countries between 1980 and 2006, regressing it on measures of initial GDP, ratio of investment to GDP, primary school enrollment and penetration of telecommunication services. The coefficients for telecommunications penetration were all positive and significant, suggesting that in developed economies an average of 10 broadband subscribers per 100 people would have resulted in a 0.43 to 1.21 percentage point increase in per capita GDP growth, while in developing countries the improvement would be about a 1.38 percentage point increase for each 10 percent increase in penetration.
Of course the results are ultimately determined by what the public and private sectors do with this opportunity, but the report suggests that the effects of investment in Internet connectivity will be even larger than what was previously observed with telecommunications in general.
The comment period is closed for the Harvard Berkman broadband study for the FCC and it does seem that the study was, as the authors state, "a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants." The 232 page document describes in quite some detail how US compares to the rest of the world in broadband deployment, measuring penetration, capacity, and price, and placing the USA squarley in the middle of the pack. That was controversial enough, but the authors aroused the ire of the US carriers by arguing that the US lagged because it alone did not enforce an "unbundling" regulatory scheme that in other countries allowed for innovative services to be developed without requiring concomitant investments in infrastructure.
Needless to say, Verizon and the United States Telecom Association took issue with the report's methodology and its conclusions, arguing that they understated the importance of government subsidies and overstated the lead of Korea, Japan, and many countries in Europe.
The report is dense with anecdotes and statistics, but it does dispense with several canards. One is that the higher penetration of broadband in places like South Korea is due to that country having a higher population density than the more suburban and rural United States. Indeed the report does show a correlation between density and broadband, but not enough to account for the difference. The analysis is quite detailed, but can be summarized in two words: New York. While Busan and Seoul have the highest average download speeds in the OECD, New York City in not even in the top twenty.
It is true that the US does very well in the price for the slowest service, but has a lot of work to do in other categories. As the report says "If we accept the World Bank analysis that 10 points in penetration per 100 translates into 1.21% GDP growth, that becomes a very important effect indeed for any given single policy intervention."
I don't always agree with everything Mark Cuban says (he's still awaiting YouTube's demise) but I did catch up on his blog recently and came across a compelling argument for why the Digital Video Recorder, e.g. TiVo, is good for the TV networks. While the networks are fretting that people might fast-forward through the commercials, they've lost sight of the fact that on the Internet people won't watch the commercials at all. For the foreseeable future, the DVR is the one reason viewers will have for getting their content via those cable TV networks that pay the fees that are an increasing portion of the networks revenue stream.
Cuban goes on to point out that instead of making the DVR suppliers lock down their platforms and neuter their features, they should take advantage of the fact the the DVR has a PC inside and make them into more powerful engines for receiving and displaying content.
In his concluding paragraph, Cuban says to the traditional media companies:
Its time for you to finally understand the new world of technology and content. You have an amazing technology, the DVR, that has almost tripled its installed based to more than 30pct in just 2 years. DVR users watch 8 hours per month of time shifted TV, which by the way is more than total average consumption of 3 hours of internet video per month. Even kids 18 to 24 watch more video on their DVR than they do on the net ! Don’t you think its worth noting that the number of DVR users is growing faster than the number of video watching internet users ? The individual consumption of DVR video far exceeds internet video. More importantly, since most DVR users are cable/telco subscribers, they actually PAY YOU MONEY to do all the above.
Could it be that the big media companies could become champions of openness?
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, suggested in a blog post last September that musicians who sold CDs at their gigs should follow the example of the band Griffin House and let the customers decide how much they should pay. He passed on this advice:
This apparently increased the band's sales from $300 to $1200 per night, for an average price of $10. Equally important, the free copies gave the band great exposure and their attendance doubled as subsequent shows.
Silvers challenged his readers to try it and document the results. Of the 362 responses he got, this one from Richard Hunter was the most inspiring:
I brought 50 CDs to the gig. I repeated over and over to this crowd, starting with my hellos, that I wanted 50 people to go home with CDs, whether they paid for them or not. Ultimately I sold or gave away 36 CDs at prices ranging from $0 to $20 for total revenue of $156, almost exactly $4.33 per unit. (About $15 of that revenue was actually food--farmer's market, remember? When I finished performing, three farmers came over to me, one by one, and gave me apples, pears, and coffee beans. I was very moved, the food is quite good, and it's as good as money to me.)
For this size crowd--about 100 people--normally I'd have sold about 15 CDs at $10 each. So the total take was similar, my cost was about $20 higher (about $1 per CD), I collected a lot of email addresses, and over 20 people went home with my music who otherwise wouldn't have. And I don't think anyone at that gig will forget me soon. The goodwill I generated today was substantial.
One interesting thing: many people seemed to feel obligated to pay, and not to take a CD unless they did, no matter how often I told them it was perfectly okay to take a CD home for free. Go figure.
For me this experiment was a success. I'll certainly try it again. Today a lot more people have my music in their hands than is usual for a gig like this, and I got paid for it. I'd MUCH rather end up printing a couple thousand more CDs to sell at an average price of $4 apiece than sit on boxes of CDs that a lot of people won't buy at $10 apiece.
[Thanks to Benoît Felten for bringing this to my attention in an insightful look at the music industry.]
“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
-W. Edwards Deming.
In the discussion about how me might control health care costs while simultaneously improving outcomes on proposed solution is evidence-based care, i.e. using data on what works to suggest (or mandate) treatment options. The usual objection is that no two patients are alike, so there is no substitute for an expert's intuition. However, in an article in the New York Times Magazine, Making Health Care Better, David Leonhardt provides some examples from places such as Intermountain Healthcare where providing doctors with suggested protocols resulted in dramatic improvements in outcomes, such as improving the survival rate for one condition from 10% to 40%. It turns out the providing a protocol can improve outcomes even when the protocol is wrong.
The explanation for this seeming paradox turns out to be that humans are very good a recognizing patterns, but only if they get rapid feedback. By computerizing medical records and analyzing the outcomes, the protocol and the actual treatments can be adjusted based on what works. Also, human intuition is notoriously bad at statistics, which is obvious to anyone who has been to Las Vegas. Following studies that analyzed outcomes, Intermountain reduced the number of newborns with respiratory problems by cutting back on the number of elective induced deliveries.
The article points out that the benefits of evidence-based care are not evenly distributed. While patients benefited, the hospital lost out on a number of highly profitable procedures. In the example cited, the doctor's ethics won out over the profit motive, but in cases where the outcomes might be the same, the hospital did not pass the savings on to the insurance company. But financial incentives are a discussion for another day.
The annual Future Forward conference took place yesterday and drew a good mixture of Boston area technology folks, from industry veterans to hopeful new entrepreneurs.
It was organized by the same crew that produce the Nantucket Conference: Shayne Gilbert, Aslyssa Stern and Scott Kirsner, although all three were low-key and let the content speak for itself.
The morning opened with some brief remarks from Gus Weber of Microsoft, a sponsor of the event. Gus reassured those assembled that despite some highly visible layoffs Microsoft was committed to its presence in New England.
The first session was a "fireside chat" with Steve Kaufer of TripAdvisor, Russ Wilcox of E Ink, and Scott Kirsner. Both CEOs gave remarkably candid accounts of their companies' twisted path from inception to acquisition and what they learned along the way. TripAdvisor had a hard time convincing anyone of the possibility of user-generated content and then had to change business models when they figured out that multiplying a large number (page views) by a tiny one (CPM) would yield a tiny number. E Ink faced numerous technical hurdles to turning their research prototype into a commercial product and almost ran out of cash. In the end, both companies were acquired when they figured out they could be more successful as part of a larger entity.
The second section had Ed Boches, Chris Brogan and Brian Halligan discussing "New Marketing" which they agreed differs from old marketing largely in that it involves more listening. Some high points:
Some other memorable moments of the day:
As usual, the day was capped by a collection of inventive new companies:
MooBella provided samples of their ice cream, which would have made the day worthwhile even without the chance to catch up with old friends and hear about the trials and tribulations of our local high-tech scene.
Thank you Scott, Alyssa and Shayne!
More photos here.
They quote the Apple Web site:
Send MMS.
Take a photo or shoot some video, then send it via Messages. You can also send audio recordings from within Messages, information from Contacts, and directions from Maps.
Once customers purchased the phone, they found out that they couldn't actually receive MMS messages on the phone but needed to go to a Web page. From the AT&T site:
Customers who are sent a MMS message and own a non-MMS capable device will receive a text message instead of an actual MMS message. The message will contain the website address of www.viewmymessage.com/1 or www.viewmymessage.com/2 as well as a user name and password. To view the MMS message, please access the website from a computer and enter the user name and password provided in the text message.
It is strangely reminiscent of the class action suit against Verizon for the lack of Bluetooth on the Motorola V710.
You can read the Apple complaint here.
In the current debate over health care reform, one assertion that is often made is that the USA spends twice as much on health care than other industrialized countries, for an outcome that is no better. Some recent statistics from the OECD confirm that assertion but call into question some conventional wisdom, such as the theory that American health care is so expensive because having a third party payer encourages excessive consumption. In fact, Americans go to see the doctor less often than people in other countries (3.8 times a year vs. 6.8 for the OECD average) and when they go to the hospital the average stay is 5.5 days, versus an OECD average of 6.5. Americans smoke and eat less than the average, but 34% of the population is categorized as obese, vs. 15.1% for the OECD in general and 3.4% for Japan. The net result is that life expectancy at birth is 78.1 in the US vs. 79.0 for the OECD and 82.6 for Japan.
Much of this is nicely summarized in a chart in this week's Wall Street Journal report on Innovations in Health Care Delivery.
The gas company sent someone yesterday to replace our gas meter, but as it turns out, the procedure apparently dislodge the hundred year old service pipe coming in from the street.
We called them and within an hour a crew was outside our house until 6:00 am the next day. Fortunately they managed to snake a new plastic pipe inside the old steel one, so they didn't need to dig up the lawn but they did have to make (and patch) a hole in the street.
Photo album here.
Hi res version here.
Since the passage Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 health care providers have moved to accommodate individuals with disabilities, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes after prodding by the government and the courts. In the case of people with hearing disabilities or limited English proficiency this accommodation usually involves the provision of an interpreter, whether in person, on the phone, or by videoconference. In Gillespie v. Dimensions Health Corp (8:05-cv-00073-DKC) the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland was asked not only to compel Dimensions' Laurel Regional Hospital to provide interpreter services but to rule on whether video-based interpretation satisfied the requirements of the law.
The case arose out the experiences of Elizabeth Gillespie and five other patients when they sought medical care in 2003 at the Laurel, Maryland hospital. According to their complaint, the hospital refused to provide them an in-person interpreter and provided only limited use of a video-based interpreting service. Among their specific allegations:
The resulting lack of communication was not only distressing, but arguably had an adverse effect on clinical outcomes,such as when a patient who had a spinal tap did not receive instructions to remain immobile.
During the pretrial maneuvering, the U.S. Department of Justice joined the case as a plaintiff-intervenor and a settlement was reached. In addition to the usual confidential financial terms, the hospital agreed to a consent decree which spelled out in some detail the hospital's obligations to provide interpreting services. While the case is not binding in other jurisdictions, it is significant in that it sets down what the government considers an acceptable policy with regard to video interpretation. The section on video reads as follows:
C. Video Interpreting Services. 1. Video interpreting services can provide immediate, effective access to interpreting services seven days per week, twenty-four hours a day in a variety of situations including emergencies and unplanned incidents. The Hospital will maintain a contract with a VIS provider with the capability of providing VIS and technical assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, with interpreters promptly available on this basis who are qualified to interpret in medical situations, and who are familiar with medical terminology. 2. The Hospital’s VIS shall meet the following performance standards: a. high quality, clear, delay-free full-motion video and audio over a dedicated high-speed Internet connection; b. a clear, sufficiently large, and sharply delineated picture of the interpreter’s and the Patient/Companion’s heads, arms, hands, and fingers, regardless of the body position of the Patient/Companion; c. clear and easily understood transmission of voices; and d. non-technicians will be trained to accomplish efficient set-up and operation. 3. The Hospital shall ensure that appropriate Hospital Personnel shall be trained, available, and able to operate and connect the VIS system quickly and efficiently at the Hospital at all times. Training shall include attention to the limitations of VIS technology, such as with respect to (i) Patients who have limited ability to move their heads, hands, or arms; vision problems; cognitive or consciousness issues; or pain issues; (ii) Patients who may be moved to areas of the Hospital that do not have a designated high speed Internet line; and (iii) Patients who will be treated in rooms where space considerations mitigate against using the service. In circumstances where the limitations of VIS technology mitigate against its use, Hospital Personnel shall conduct another Communication Assessment as required by Section IV (B), in order to reassess the need for an alternative auxiliary aid or interpretive service to ensure effective communication.
tUsers of herot.com experienced a brief power outage today, occasioned by a brief rain shower punctuated by a loud pop as a tree branch fell on a power line.
NSTAR was on the scene in half an hour, and replaced a stretch of broken high voltage wire. I'm always impressed by how such a thin wire can supply power to an entire neighborhood. I=P/E which means for large values of E (voltage a.k.a. Electromotive Force) the amperage, I, is rather small and thus the wires don't need to be so large.
More photos here.
In doing some research on Copyright Law, I came across this little gem from the U.S. Copyright Office:
How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?
Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will protect your photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis. File your claim to copyright online by means of the electronic Copyright Office (eCO). Pay the fee online and attach a copy of your photo. Or, go to the Copyright Office website, fill in Form CO, print it, and mail it together with your photo and fee. For more information on registration a copyright, see SL-35. No one can lawfully use your photo of your sighting, although someone else may file his own photo of his sighting. Copyright law protects the original photograph, not the subject of the photograph.