Monthly Archives: June 2003

One Phone Number – To Go

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Local Number Portability, or LNP, has been a hot topic recently among consumers and people working in the wireless communication industry. LNP is a new technical capability mandated by the FCC designed to allow consumers to easily switch between telephone companies while keeping their existing telephone numbers. LNP is being aggressively fought by the CTIA and its individual members, including Verizon Wireless, which released a statement claiming that the FCC would accomplish nothing by mandating it:

Requiring local number portability is bad public policy, and the resources required to fulfill this new mandate will unnecessarily be redirected from our core business activities: expanding network quality and reach, improving customer service, and initiating new services and products…Before the portability requirement is effective, American consumers should expect that when they change wireless service providers and want to keep their phone numbers, the process is easy and automatic.

While I think it will be awesome to be able to keep my phone number if I should decide to switch to a different phone company, I find myself agreeing with Verizon’s premise – the FCC needs to explain to carriers how to separate the phone numbers from the geographic information they are currently based on. They also need to think about whether it’s in the public’s best interest to have to dial a 10-digit phone number for a person next door, which is already in places like Michigan, Chicago*, and New Jersey, but will become even more prevalent when numbers start to move across town (or potentially, across states).

The FCC needs to figure out how LNP is supposed to work before it’s implemented. Otherwise, you might need to keep the “dialing instructions” in your phone book handy.

* LINK TENDING 1/11 – Removed dead link.

Full Disclosure

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Even though I don’t claim to be impartial (or even a journalist), I would be ethically remiss in failing to point out that Corrin, who posts comments from time to time on Waileia, is my girlfriend of 2+ years. Her comments are unsolicited, and I rarely consult her on what I post here until after the fact. I won’t be talking much about her or anybody else in my life so I can maintain at least some degree of privacy. I appreciate your understanding.

Blogs as Mass Media

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People have been tossing around the possibility that blogging might be the next “mass media” to emerge for a long time now. Most recently, Bene Diction pointed out a column by geek political analyst John C. Dvorak about the phenomenon:

Let me stop here for a moment and make some specific predictions. Within the next year, both David Letterman and Jay Leno will make jokes about blogs and even discuss them. “Nightline” will do an entire show on blogging.

Do I think that blogs can become mainstream? Absolutely. I’ve only been blogging for a little while, but I’ve been reading blogs much, much longer, and I believe that blogs have the potential to one day surpass mainstream media in the current arena of competition among the media – news analysis and commentary.

The characteristic definition for a blog has been a frequently-updated page with dated entries, newest entries on top. This definition is very broad; it covers everything from diaries to blogs maintained by traditional media outlets, such as Christianity Today. In this entry, I’m only going to be referring to bloggers who are more or less freelance news commentators.

Traditional media is in a pretty secure position. They have a network of reporters worldwide, contracts with news syndicators like Associated Press and Reuters, and lots of cash on hand. There’s two places where blogs might be able to get their collective foot in the door – deadlines and space.

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He’s Real

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Peter Maass, a columnist over at Slate, has conclusively (in my mind, at least) answered a question that has been floating all over the blogosphere: Salam Pax is real.

Salam Pax, an Iraqi who’s been blogging the war first-hand at Where is Raed?, has been the subject of much speculation, among bloggers and traditional media alike.

Speculations included the possibility that the blog was propaganda from the CIA or the Mukhabarat, or that Salam was nothing but a hoax. People throughout the ‘net worried about his welfare when he suddenly stopped blogging as the war began. The Guardian, which has hired Salam to write a bi-weekly column, reports that there were times that his loss of Internet access made him wonder whether officials were on to him. Although Diana Moon (via Google), Salam’s friend, believed he was real, most people took this with a grain of salt.

I’m glad you’re okay, Salam. I have a feeling I’ll be reading more of your work now that I know you’re legit.

Link via such small hands (June 3rd; permalinks broken).

Learning to MOO

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With all the excitement of the regular IRC discussions hosted by signposts, I thought I’d introduce everybody to another medium for instant conversation on the Internet: MOOing.

MOOs, or Multi-user Oject-Oriented, are best described as text-based virtual reality simulations. They are run on UNIX computers connected to the Internet; all one needs to participate is access to the ‘net and a telnet client.

Once newbies get used to them, MOOs are very easy to navigate in. Locations in a MOO, called rooms, usually have exits that correspond to the cardinal directions on a compass (“north,” “south,” “east,” “west,” etc.), as well as commonly-used monikers (like “out” to leave rooms like closets). You can talk to others in the room by typing say something or "something, which results in others seeing something like, CWhiz says, something. Objects as varied as TVs, helicopters, and parrots can (usually) be picked up, used, or given away as gifts. (There’s even a King James Bible, but the Gopher server that provided the text for the object seems to have been taken down.)

For geeks, a MOO is even more interesting because it’s possible to extend the virtual world by adding new objects and other commands (called verbs). For LambdaMOO, the most popular MOO and MOO server, all it takes is getting a programmer bit and learning a fairly simple, yet powerful, scripting language.

If you’d like to come visit my apartment on LambdaMOO, just let me know via my feedback form, and I’ll be happy to show you around. Or, if you’d like to explore on your own, just telnet to lambda.moo.mud.org, port 8888.