Maszman Speaks!

CRW 0205

Orig­i­nally uploaded by tom­masz

I stopped by the Auto X 2008 extri­ca­tion com­pe­ti­tion at Chili FD on Sat­ur­day. Palm Beach County, FL was in the lim­ited arena, no hydraulic tools allowed. This sce­nario was a snow mobile on top of a car (not a likely Florida experience).

Lift­ing off the roof.

Steve Minarik’s mis­take wasn’t that he abused his power as chair­man of the Mon­roe County GOP, it was that he made Mag­gie Brooks look bad. Der Fuehrer doesn’t like that.

Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen

There are very few cities that you fly to from Rochester via a direct flight and soon there will be even fewer. Despite the price of gas, dri­ving to Buf­falo or Syra­cuse might become our best option for air­line travel.

Bye-bye Sky­way!

Orig­i­nally uploaded by tom­masz

As of Mon­day, access to Mid­town will be via ground only.

One inter­est­ing part of the recent 700 MHz FCC auc­tion was the cre­ation of the “Block D” plan. The FCC’s idea was to set aside part of the spec­trum for public/emergency ser­vice use. So far so good. But instead of just allo­cat­ing the spec­trum and let­ting autho­rized par­ties use it, their idea was to put it out for bid like the rest of the 700 MHz band and then force a num­ber of con­di­tions on the win­ner as far as use and what they would have to pro­vide to users. Unsur­pris­ingly, there were no bid­ders for Block D. Worse, cities like NYC and DC that the FCC assumed would eat this up, don’t want it.

The FCC needs to get back to its for­mer reg­u­la­tory role, try­ing to be a rev­enue source via spec­trum auc­tions is clearly not some­thing it’s good at.