Will CSU wireless standards meet future needs?

CSU mandating wireless standards
I have heard the CSU Chancellor's office is looking to include mandatory wireless networking standards in its standards for networks on all the CSU campuses in California. Let us hope those standards accommodate wifi enabled devices such as these shown at the recent Consumer Electronics Show [Search Link]. If we base our networks on the old model of just laptop computers using wireless to access E-mail and Web that network will be obsolete before before it broadcasts a packet.

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Intel Mac Envy

Apple drops Intel bomb on Powerbook Users
Apple just dropped a bomb on users of G4 Powerbooks with the release of a new line of Intel based Macbook Pros [Link] running Intel processors. These new jewels not only are four times as fast as the existing models, they reportedly will run Windows XP without having to use Virtual PC. As an owner of two 12 inch G4 powerbooks [Link] all I can say is boy am I jealous. Meanwhile, I am upgrading the video card on my old Powermac G4 AGP "Sawtooth" [Link] to get another 18 months out of it. I am waiting for the Intel processor desktop systems to come out and for more apps to be native Intel. Anybody who pays top dollar for any non-Intel PPC Apple box now is just dumb. Software, in a few years, will not even be able to run on those already obsolete computers.

Technorati Tags: San Jose, SJSU, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca, pedagogy

This is our university

Winter break
It is winter break at San Jose State University and the campus is quiet. Winter break is a short pause between semesters. It is marked by alternating days of rain and days of crisp cold clarity. For a few weeks in January the faculty and students are gone and the campus belongs to the staff. The campus is quiet. Footsteps echo in the corridors. Even though we still have to work, it is now our place. This is our university.

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Here are some pictures of Kenneth

Tomorrow is my youngest son Kenneth's birthday. He will be 19.

As Kenneth's birthday has been approaching I have been thinking a lot about it. It seems like he was just a little boy. Now, in 12 months he will be 20. Days go by so fast their passing seems trivial. But, each day is unique and never to be repeated again. Kids, they grow up so fast. It seems like yesterday, but just a little over a decade ago Kenneth was a little 8-year-old.

One of our favorite things to do was to go camping at a place called "camp." This is a place where my first wife Candy went since she was a little girl. After she died, this is where we buried her ashes. I hope we can go back there this year. 

Here are some pictures of Kenneth.

The China Blogger

Last time I looked, the issue of the Chinese blogger was not getting as much attention in Robert Scoble's blog. Robert did mention in this post [Link to Scoble post] a post by Michael Connolly, a product unit manager on MSN Spaces [Link to Connolly's post]:

"In China, there is a unique issue for our entire industry: there are certain aspects of speech in China that are regulated by the government. We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws."

I guess that is the $64,000 question. When a company hosts a blogger, like MSN spaces does, and that blogger's content is theoretically able to be read world wide, and that company is a multi-national, is it an American company or a Chinese company? Does it adhere to American values of free speech or something less? These are serious issues. Let us not forget Tiananmen Square or the repression of Falun Gong. I used to work with a fellow who was imprisoned in China for 18 years for the crime of being educated in the west.

If these are indeed "Naked Conversations" that companies like Microsoft/MSN are enabling I wonder:

• Will Microsoft enable politically sensitive conversations even if doing so threatens a huge market, such as China?
• Or, will the company instead cater to the whims of a repressive government?
• If so, will executives use excuses like "we were just following orders" and/or we need to "adhere to local regulations and laws?"
• Will Scoble keep the heat on?
• If Anti, the blogger from China, took up Scoble's offer to let Anti use Scoble's blog, would Scoble still do it?
• If Anti, the blogger from China, took up Scoble's offer use Scoble's blog, and Scoble did it, would Microsoft fire Scoble?
• Or, will this just fade away in all the excitement of the CES and MacWorld?
• My money is on the latter.

Hey folks, this is much bigger than CES and MacWorld or any trade show here! Americans and also good freedom loving folks from China have died fighting for these values. Can we really let this issue just fade away?

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"Stop the presses!"

Katharine Q Seelye of the New York Times wrote this story [Link] about the dilema facing newspaper editors when the news came out that the trapped West Virginia miners were dead, after they were first reported as being alive. According to Seelye:

Most papers were reporting that the trapped West Virginia miners had been found alive. When they learned that all but one of the miners were in fact dead, about 3 a.m. Eastern time, many papers in the East had ended their press runs, and those westward were nearing their closes.

Technorati Tags: ssloansjca, Steve Sloan, j-school

Accident at Borello and Bascom

Last month Susie sent this article [Link] to Gary Richards. Richards is The San Jose Mercury News's "Mister Roadshow." He writes a daily traffic article that runs on the second page of the newspaper every day. So far Susie's story has not run and the hazard continues. I noticed when I drove through there last week that there was sulfur waste from the burning of highway flares there. Last night when I went over to Fran's (to put a license plate sticker on her car) I saw a SUV near the intersection laying on its side on Bascom. Bascom was closed in the northbound direction and lots of emergency vehicles were on the scene. This is a terrible intersection with roads, light rail tracks, freight railroad tracks, lots of traffic and all converging at one place and with tight angles. This needs to be fixed!

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Scoble takes on Microsoft and the PRC?

Is Scoble taking on his employer (again)?
SJSU alum and Microsoft tech guru Robert Scoble has apparently fired a shot across his employer's bow (again.) This time it is over the alleged censoring of a Chinese blogger [Link] by Microsoft's MSN Spaces. Scoble references this post by Rebecca MacKinnon [Link] that said, "On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti."

Scoble went on further to offer space on his own blog to the blogger known as Anti who is allegedly being blocked by MSN:

Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti I’d like to offer you a guest blog here on my blog. I won’t censor you and you can write whatever you’d like.

Is Scoble heading, or being lead, to the door?
In another post [Link] Scoble hints that perhaps he has outlived his usefulness at Microsoft. In reaction to his fame, Scoble himself says that some folks don't get what he is about. He said, "You still don’t get it. Something changed over the last five years. What? Everyone has a voice." I think he is right, but freedom of speech is still a relative thing. No, I don't think his employer would fire him, at least not openly or without a huge reason (like protecting a very lucrative market.) Scoble has a personal brand that adds a lot of value to Microsoft.

Scoble vs. the PRC?
That said, the China market is huge and sensitive. Microsoft has a lot of money at stake there. According to MacKinnon, "the commercial blog hosting companies see people like Anti as a threat to their business." If Scoble makes the People's Republic of China's government very mad, his employer could see him as more of a liability than an asset, no matter how big a spike he is.

What if that were you or me? Would/could you do what Scoble did?
A couple of months ago I spoke to a group of long-tail bloggers at a Southbay Bloggers Meetup Group meeting in Cupertino and I did not find any there who would. In my opinion I have seen and felt reprisals in my own little world for what I have blogged and podcast. I feel somewhat protected because I am a long-term state university employee working in a place with a union. But, as a long-tail blogger I do not feel as free as Scoble. I wonder how many bloggers who did not have Scoble's fame and Google Juice, or a great union, or a pot of gold, or a very marketable unique talent would dare to take on their employer like Scoble did? As well as outright termination what they often do to people who make waves in my long-tail world is to just marginalize them to tedius work to encourage them to leave. Marginalization is one of the most effective ways to quiet passionate and engaged individuals who speak their minds. Scoble has clearly and so firmly established his brand as to be a spike blogger who does not have to worry about such things. Speaking for myself I would have to think long and hard before such openly and publicly taking on my employer. Were I an even more vulnerable blogger than I am now, I would either mute my conversation more than I do or do my blogs anonymously.

Thank God for the EFF [Link] and thank God for the tools to blog incognito when need be.

One more thing
Scoble is right and did the right thing to do what he did. I wish more people felt free to speak their conscience on their blogs.

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Lost week

Personal note
Over the holiday break my wife and I became very ill with the flu. I am sorry to have been off line so long. We are doing much better now. It is good to be back.

Wireless networking at SJSU

Hail the new wireless network, now let's plan its replacement
According to a story in today's Mercury News by Dean Takahashi [Link] the hot thing in this year's Consumer Electronics Show is going to be Internet connectivity. No, he is not talking about your computer, he is talking about all kinds of devices including things like digital cameras and iPods connecting directly to the Internet to access and move data around:

This year's Consumer Electronics Show is expected to demonstrate that just about every type of gadget will be connected to the Internet and each other -- giving folks access to more digital entertainment like music, video and games, and forcing companies to make their gear work with other devices.

As we ponder and plan the next phase, version 3.0 of the university's wireless network, we need to come to grips with the challenges of how we can provide the levels of security we need to protect our university's digital assets while still enabling access to the network by digital devices that may lack the ability to log in to the wireless network using a web browser:

Just how big a factor will the Internet be in new gadgets in 2006? Consider this: For the first time, Google co-founder Larry Page and Yahoo CEO Terry Semel will be making speeches at this year's show, which is the showcase of the latest hardware innovations. This year, 2,500 exhibitors are expected at the four-day event that starts Thursday in Las Vegas.

As we look at the involvement of folks like Page and Semel, we see why companies like Google have been investing in dark fiber and making offers of free wireless access to metropolitan markets. They are planning to be selling in this space. Building free wireless networks when you are selling on the Internet is like building free and convenient parking lots when you are building a shopping mall. You cannot sell if folks can't get to your store. The technologies of selling are the technologies of collaboration and conversation. There is a whole new wave of collaboration technologies that go far beyond the paradigm of just using a computer to access the Internet for web browsing and E-mail. This new paradigm of mobile and pervasive networking is going to require a much more reliable, robust and inclusive wireless networking infrastructure. According to Takahashi:

People want to move content from the Internet -- movies, games, or music -- to any of their devices, and view that content wherever they want. And while they want the functions the Internet provides -- like instant feature or software updates -- they don't want the hassle of logging into a network.

Tomorrow we will be able to celebrate the turning on of version 2.0 of the wireless network at SJSU. This will happen as the Comcast network is turned on and used on our campus. But, we will not have much time to rest on our laurels. We have to plan version 3.0 now! The future is right around the corner. In fact, it may soon be in the palm of our hand.

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