Dana Blankenhorn

The Online Campaign 2012

I have followed online campaigning since 1996.

The big change took place in the law, not the technology. The Bush people managed to keep Bill Bradley's campaign with linking to friendly web sites in a web ring by complaining to the FEC through lawyer Ben Ginsberg. But that faded later in the decade, when it became clear that Web sites run by third parties, and web comments made by people outside the campaign, were free speech.

Meanwhile the Dean campaign of 2004 failed to "scale the intimacy" of its blog when everyone rushed to the rail, resulting in an orange-hatted mess in Iowa. One result was that the Democratic clubhouse moved to the Web site of Markos "Kos" Moulitsas, who had recommended the switch from a blogging to a community network service (CNS) platform.

Missouri Solar Breakthrough Needs Rectifier

Patrick Pinhero, a former Idaho researcher now at the University of Missouri, has put out a press release claiming he can get the efficiency of solar panels from the current 20% to 95% at a stroke through what he calls a nantenna.

This has some reporters screaming "solar superpower," which is just what Pinhero wants them to say because he's looking for money.

What he actually seems to have is little more than what he previously showed in Idaho, a thin film of nanowires which, while promising because they can be created using a printing method on gold foil, still has a long way to go to become commercial.

The problem in Idaho was the gold. Gold is a fine conductor, but at $1,500 per ounce it's not useful in industrial applications.

The problem now is that while you may be able to get the power into the system, even accepting infrared light that bounces off the Earth after the Sun has set, you can't make it useful because the waves oscillate trillions of times per second -- convention AC power oscillates 60 times per second. Whether Pinhero has a working rectifier that can be scaled to industrial production is an open question -- the press materials at this point are unclear.

If he has a complete invention -- printed circuits using conventional materials that are 95% efficient and can be turned into usable power -- then he has a history-making breakthrough. But right now that's a big if. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, and it would be wise for reporters to remember that.

 

Finally, Soundnote http://soundnote.com/ is taking the pain out of interviews. Wonder why it took the iPad era to get this right?

Xamarin Overdue, But Can It Last?

As I guessed early this month, Mono has found a home.

The Linux .Net offering will now be housed in a start-up, Xamarin, which will be run by the same team, headed by lead developer Miguel de Icaza, that ran the Mono project.

As The Register reports, de Icaza claimed to be shocked (shocked) that he wasn't part of the plan when Novell was broken up and his bit was given to AttachMate, a small company with no heritage of doing anything so interesting as Mono.

The Real Cybersecurity Problem is Identity

The White House has endorsed a draconian “cybersecurity” plan now making its way through Congress.

It would essentially say all your clicks belong to us. Police would have carte blanche to seize domains, decrypt files, and run roughshod over citizens in the name of catching bad guys who are hiding behind proxy servers in the Ukraine or some other such place.

All this would be unnecessary if so-called Internet advocates had accepted a very basic truth that our Meat Space ancestors knew well.

Privacy and security are the same thing. Both depend on identity.

Groklaw will survive if new editor Mark Webbinks hires a publisher and puts together a business model that pays for quality content -- starting with his own. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110515173831922

The Cloud Backlash will FAIL

The big story of this month is the backlash against the cloud.

It began with Amazon's downtime, and has continued with the revelation that Amazon itself was the source of the hack attack that took down Sony. This has caused nervous nellies like Murray Jennex of San Diego State to suggest cloud computing be ignored by the enterprise.

But the problem here isn't the cloud. The problem is identity. A Bloomberg story describes the Amazon sign-up procedure:

Signing up to the service requires a name, e-mail address, password, phone number, billing address and credit card information. Users get an automated call from Amazon and are asked to dial in a four-digit verification code to complete the registration process.

Note what's missing? Proof that you are who you say you are. A hacker can use a stolen identity. He doesn't have to prove he is who he is.

Facebook Knows It Can't Beat Google

The silly scandal of Facebook running off to Hillary Clinton's old campaign manager, trying to launch a privacy investigation over Google Social Circle, actually has a serious point behind it.

Facebook can't beat Google. And they know it.

The issue that has reporters Twittering is privacy and even the fact we're all talking about that means that Facebook has succeeded in its campaign, because we're talking about something Facebook has long had to deal with, and in that it can be seen as existing on a level playing field with Google.

But in evaluating the two companies that's not the real issue. Raw traffic is not the real issue. Ads are not the real issue.

The real issue is infrastructure.

John Henry in Dilbert's Cube

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 21 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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John Henry is one of America's founding myths.

He is usually portrayed as a black man, which makes him unique among early American heroes. The essence of the story is that of a man against a machine, winning and then collapsing and dieing on the spot.

The story was first told in the 1870s, and represented the great economic battle of that time, the same battle fought out on during the Civil War. Southerners used brute labor to get rich on cotton, but the machine age would overwhelm them and make us one nation again, then drive us forward.

What's important to note is that this story has been played out, again-and-again, in every generation since then.

• Farmers were the John Henry of the 1890s. Their Populist revolt was based on the primacy of production over distribution. Distribution won, an organized economy being created on standardizing the price of economic inputs.

• Wall Street bankers were the John Henry of the 1930s. The Depression resulted from a shortage of demand, something the market could not fix. Government had to provide that demand and create the middle class before mass consumption could match mass production.

• Factory workers were the John Henry of the 1970s. Rust Belt workers were replaced by Sun Belt innovations, microchips automating the manufacturing and distribution process, content providing the new economic way forward.

Open Source Did Not Save Microsoft From U.S.

A lot of experts are weighing in on the end of the government's anti-trust case against Microsoft, many of them saying it was open source that stayed the government's hand.

I think they're wrong.

It was the case itself that stayed Microsoft's hand.

Anyone who hasn't been under antitrust scrutiny doesn't know what it's about. The launch of a case requires the hiring of all sorts of lawyers, both inside and outside the gates, whose job it becomes to look over the shoulders of the business and say "no."

No, you can't do that. No, you can't say that. No, you can't write that.