Next week I’m gone three days out of the five, but at least I’m going within driving distance and will be sleeping in my own bed.  And I did get something writing-related accomplished:  I cleaned up my three shorts and entered them plus the feature in the Screenwriting Expo competition.

I attended a meeting of the Austin chapter of MUFON and heard and saw several things that will give the characters in my latest script some more depth.  It’s too easy to write stereotypes and it can be tempting, but I don’t want to do that.

Although I am doing one cliche thing — one of the lead characters is basically me.  The challenge is, being me, can I write her in a good light?  Guess I’ll have to fake up some stuff to trigger the likeability factor.

h/t Slashdot:

A laptop containing the unencrypted security data for 33,000 travelers using the Clear system was stolen at San Francisco International Airport on July 26, according to CBS5 Television. The Clear system allows travelers who register and pay a $100.00 annual fee to speed through airport security by using a smart card at special kiosks in some airports. TSA has suspended new registrations in the system, which is run by a private contractor, Verified Identity Pass, Inc., a subsidiary of GE. The laptop was apparently stolen from a locked office at SFO. The company has now decided that it might be a good idea to encrypt the data in their systems. They are in the process of notifying customers that all of their personal data, including name, address, SSi number, passport number, date of birth, etc. has been compromised.

“The company has now decided that it might be a good idea to encrypt the data in their systems.” Ya think?

But don’t worry, TSA will catch the crook. They have his shampoo.

I’m still laughing.

Getting a drive-thru fast food lunch because the new exercise I tried on Saturday has left my thighs so decimated that the thought of climbing up and down the three flights of stairs needed to retrieve my forgotten home cooked healthy lunch is too excruciating to contemplate.

…from Fractals of Change, channeling Andy Kessler, echoing what has been my own view all along:  regulation (or lack of it) is not the problem.  Competition (the lack of it) IS the problem.  Regulation would denigrate into incumbent protectionism.

Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, now you can using their new tool, Switzerland.  Use it, give it to friends and family and tell them to use it.

Especially if they’re stuck with Comcast.

…via The Old Farmer’s Almanac:

A lady must not, while wearing her bridal veil, smoke a cigarette.

Omitted is the remainder of the advice:

…lest she set herself on fire and leave her publicly grieving widower privately relieved that he did not leave his home and children in the care of such an immensely stupid person.

Just sayin’.

Austin is supposed to inaugurate its commuter rail system this year. Well, better to say its rail system. They say this year. Sometime. Now comes this news that Cap Metro is considering using a zone fare system, instead of a single fare system. This would be truly, deeply stupid.

NYC, Boston and Chicago all use single fare systems without a problem. Regular readers of this blog know well how much I love Boston and Chicago mass transit. Their train and bus (and boat, in Boston’s case, maybe NYC too) systems are seamlessly integrated. If single fare works for very large cities with many routes, vehicles and stations, then it works just as well if not better for a system that will have only a few trains, fewer stations and one route.

Personally, I think Cap Metro is in for a big disappointment in ridership of this train. It terminates downtown, where very few Austinites actually work, and in the far northern burbs, whose residents have countless entertainment and recreation options much closer to home than downtown.

It barely touches the low income east Austin residents who might have some use for it. And it completely bypasses the central and south Austin hippies and college students who are the demographic most likely to use the damn thing. For riders dependent on public transit now, I don’t see how the train is going to offer any sort of improvement, as most riders will still have to drive to the station and/or transfer to other vehicles (busses) to get to their final destination.

I understand that this route was the first because it uses existing track in some places. It’s still a very poor start to a mass transit option that is, IMHO, too little too late.

He’s made himself out as a good guy for slamming Comcast for “content management”, better labeled as “content discrimination”.  But he’s opening the door for broadband metering, which many tech authorities decry as deeply stupid, not least of all because it is so shortsighted.  Om Malik has a great post today on this and I not only urge you to read the entire thing, but the substantive comments as well.  Om concisely points out the problem with caps:

While 5 GB looks pretty sizable – Comcast claims that their average broadband subscriber only uses 2 GB per month – in reality, it’s nothing. It’s essentially two movies in HD. Once you go over the limit, the meter ticks over faster than a San Francisco taxicab.

There are many reasons why the companies would prefer metered broadband over current offerings but the following never occurred to me until Malik brought it up this morning:

Of course, it helped that the growing use of the Internet increased the amount of advertising dollars being spent online. The billions of dollars in profits being raked in by web companies made broadband providers…jealous.

The best of the comments, IMO, is this one from a reader handling himself Corey who raises an extremely good question:

Many cable companies offer VOIP. Recently, phone companies (such as AT&T) began doing the same (VOIP in addition to POTS). Here’s where the problem with “capping” comes in… is the bandwidth utilized by their VOIP service going to count towards the transfer cap? If it will count then how will they justify this? “Unlimited calls in the US” their VOIP service will state. On the underside, if you go over the cap then you will *technically* still be paying for some of your calls.

On the other hand, let’s say they don’t count THEIR VOIP service towards the bandwidth cap. What about Vonage? Will these calls be counted towards the bandwidth cap? If yes = monopoly. If no = how will they keep track of this? VOIP services pop up constantly. Many small, some big.

Now what happens when TV over IP comes along one day…?

I’ve always said that I think a lot of the network neutrality issues seem more naturally to fall under FTC jurisdiction rather than FCC, and I think Corey adds another dimension to that.  If the telcos’ VOIP offerings don’t count against their caps but third party VOIP offerings do count, that’s one hell of a monopoly case.

Hmmm…Actually, I think I’m more the Social Justice Crusader/Reality-Based Intellectual. Too many questions on this quiz for which more than one answer was appropriate. And my campaign song, assuming he’d let me use it, would actually be “Rebel Rebel”.

My Liberal Identity:

You are an Eco-Avenger, also known as an environmentalist or tree hugger. You believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com