on this day in 1658 Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, died. raise a glass.

“On June 12, 2008, Earthlink Wireless plans to disconnect their municipal WiFi service in the City of Philadelphia. For the sake of being timely, I am releasing my unfinished documentary about the joint program between Earthlink Municipal WiFi and the local non-profit, Philadelphia Wireless, forgoing further editing and technical corrections.”

its too bad that this initiative didnt go anywhere. the digital divide is a hard subject to grapple with. giving people wireless access is one thing but what if they dont have anything to use to connect to the wireless. was there sufficient support for users? connecting a windows machine to a wireless network can be hella annoying sometimes, well any device for that matter on that network. the OLPC was for third world countries, laptops were still pricey and the eeePC wasnt on the horizon yet when the intiative launched so was there a need for such a large rollout, not to be classist or anything but trying to be realistic. the goal of covering an entire city in wifi is a lot to bite off especially for a company that doesnt know the city all that well. how much penetration does earthlink DSL have in this area? look at verizon a major player in the area cant even get their FiOS going to a degree to compete with comcast. and to be blunt what major initiative has the city been able to pull off successfully lately anyways. single stream recycling?

movie below

Change is in the Airwaves: A Documentary about the Philadelphia Wireless Initiative from George Rausch on Vimeo.

sent a text to haveboard regarding this friday night. drive by and shot a photo with my phone. whoever took this spot down did it with a vengeance. anything and everything that was cement there for the most part whether it was skateable or not was destroyed. according to the philadelphia board of revision and taxes the land at 1131 GERMANTOWN AVE is owned by NORTHERN LIBERTIES DEVELO. apparently it was bought for $4 in 2000 and its market value is only $10,800. nothing goes on there other than valet parking from further up 2nd street. so my only conclusion is NORTH LIBERTIES DEVELO hates not only skateboarding but fun and young people in general, but will want them to live in their condos when they realize that skateboarders make up the ‘creative class’ that they are marketing to. fuck these dudes.

the library of congress took a $3mill “grant” of technology and services from microsoft in return for placing kiosks with the vista OS and redo the website using silverlight. this makes me sad. vista is a piece of crap. silverlight is only compatible on vista. an institution such as the library of congress should not be wrapping public works in proprietary and non-interoperable locks.

found this via treehugger. the league of conservation voters has a portal to see how your elected officials scored on an environmental report card. for presidential candidates. treehugger did the work onpresidential candiddates: “Clinton’s score in 2007 was 73 percent (87 percent lifetime);
Obama’s was 67 percent (86 percent lifetime). Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil – a measure that failed by only one vote.” bad mccain! BAD! pennsylvania politicians are a mixed bunch with Bill Shuster (REP) earning a 5% and Joe Sestak (DEM) earning a 100%. i am a big fan of being able to further hold officials to their voting record and there are more and more “web 2.0″ sites that are aggregating and holding officials accountable for their actions. even with these tools, the voters need to seek them out to educate themselves.

Lawrence Lessig is preparing a two prong approach to clean up congress. the first is his change congress initiative and a deciding on whether to run for congress himself in CA. Lessig came to my attention through his free culture push and his copyright reform talks, namely his TED talk entitled How creativity is being strangled by the law. he is a very very smart man on many fronts and would be a welcome addition to congress along with a good handful of his friends and colleagues as well. i say do it. new blood, new ideas are needed within washington to help this country move forward and out of the grips of money tainted lobbyists.

as a way to remember strummer and his mark on the world billy bragg started a charity called jail guitar doors and it work to provide musical equipment for the use of inmates serving time in Her Majesty’s prisons. It takes its name from the b-side of the Clash’s 1978 single “Clash City Rockers”. the newly released shirt takes lyrics from White Man in Hammersmith Palais and puts them over an awesome portrait of strummer.

i know it has been said time and time again but now with camera more out in the open the jocks with badges have alot of explaining to do. i know, there are some good cops doing good work but when they do things like this it takes the entire group down with them. the video shows a deputy dumping a quadriplegic man from his wheelchair for a traffic violation. the saddest part about the second video is the cops have no review system in place to police themselves and they didnt know about the incident till the press showed up. way to go Hillsborough Co. Sheriff’s Office.