The trend toward "municipal Wi-Fi" is disturbing, from a number of perspectives. First, it represents yet another distribution of wealth from those who produce it to those who don't. Second, and in a sense more disturbing, it will chill the private development of alternative and potentially superior solutions.

Certainly, there are those who don't currently utilize the Internet who will, once it's free. There are also those who are currently paying for Internet access, who will switch to the free offering. Companies that have made investments in providing wireless Internet access will lose money, and will pull out of that space. They and other companies will also forego investing money in newer and better technologies, both because of the potential for government to render their investments worthless and the lack of penetration due to those people who will stay with the inferior but free alternative.

Note that this discussion does not apply to the efforts of private (i.e., non-government) companies to offer access, such as Google's project in San Francisco. A private company invests its own money (or that of its investors) with the intention of gaining a return. Either they have a good business plan, and will succeed, or a bad business plan, and will fail. In either case, it's their money that they're investing, and they do so based on free choices with specific return-on-investment objectives.

Government, on the other hand, has no such limitations. Government can spend any amount of money, for any length of time, for any level of service, based on any technology provided by any contracted organization. All decisions are made not based on a desire for profit, but based on fiat. That means, decisions are based not on the desires of paying customers, i.e., those willing and able to spend their money on the service, but rather on some committee's definition of what people "need." It's difficult to imagine a more capricious decision-making model.

Ultimately, we'll all suffer from such activities. Some higher-speed, more efficient, ultimately less expensive technology will be delayed or, possibly, will never be developed because no company will be willing to invest in it. And, given the possibility that government will offer a competitive, "free" service, or at best will sanction a single provider, one can't blame them.

Certainly, a capitalist would disagree vehemently with such programs. But everyone who loves technology, and who recognizes its potential for improving man's life, should be just as opposed to it. Likely, many won't, however, because they simply can't turn down an offer of a free lunch.

There was a time, though, when everyone knew there's no such thing.

Short topic tonight. Basically, this. Did Bush really tell Syria to be a "good neighbor"?!? I suppose he did... Next, he'll be asking Iran if we can all just get along.

At times, things seem just a little surreal.

I sell document management solutions for a living, and it seems to me that businesses are increasingly interested in migrating their paper documents to digital images. They perceive value in the potential space savings and workflow efficiencies, and are begining to respond more positively to the notion of investing in an archival system (at least).

The challenge lies in overcoming their fundamental ignorance of digital imaging concepts. This is particularly true regarding capture, or the methods by which paper is converted to an electronic analogue and transfered to some backend storage system. They seem to struggle with the notion that scanning and indexing (associating images with key values to enable efficient retreival) is an incrediby labor-intensive task, and often represents a higher cost in labor than the combined cost of the hardware, software, and implementation services.

Consider that, by industry standards, a single scanning operator who performs his own document preparation can be expected to prepare, scan, and index at most 25o pages per hour. In and of itself, this could be considered an unrealistic estimate, depending on the state of the documents being scanned. A simple scanning operation with one scanner would therefore take on average at least 4,000 labor hours to complete a backfile conversion (the process of scanning all existing pages) of 1,000,000 pages. That's a person working full-time for two years.

Most often, when presented with such statistics, potential customers are shocked. Their interest in the project understandably wanes, and in many cases they abandon the project completely. In some cases, the value of electronic storage and retrieval is high enough that day-forward scanning is good enough; eventually, documents in the backfile will go away through sheer attrition.

The point of this discussion is: technology itself is only one side of a sometimes very expensive coin. How technology impacts an organization, and the cost of implementing technology, is often more important than the cost of the technology itself.

I'm fascinated by the comparisons between Microsoft and Google. The basic premise seems to be that Google is what Microsoft was some years ago: powerful and domineering, with a hint of potentially anti-competitive thrown in. What's most fascinating is the presumption that Google is beating Microsoft at its own game, and in the process becoming the "new" Microsoft.

This is so fascinating not because it's true; I doubt that the veracity of the claim could ever be established, since it's based on so many indefinable characteristics. No, it's fascinating because those who make this claim are, I imagine, many of the same people who have attacked Microsoft all these years for being "monopolistic," for utilizing its "market strength" to oppress its customers and unfairly harm its competitors.

At the same time, some of the discussion goes a step further. It implies (or in some cases explicitly states) that Microsoft has grown soft, thus giving Google the opportunity to overtake it. This represents yet another example of the ability of the human mind to compartmentalize and thus simultaneously hold otherwise contradictory concepts: those who support this argument are claiming that Microsoft is both a rabid monopolist requiring governmental action to rein it in, and a middle-aged has-been incapable of competing in a rapidly changing Internet environment.

However, either Microsoft is a monopolist that utilizes its market power to compete unfairly and harm consumers, and thus requires government oversight and intervention, or it is a company whose alleged paranoia in competing so fervently was entirely understandable and logical given the fact that it could, in fact, lose the competition. Stated another way, if Microsoft's failure to respond quickly enough to Google's penetration into its space can result in Microsoft's ultimate downfall, then it should be entirely clear that Microsoft can, indeed, be beaten by a committed and talented opponent. In which case, of course, the monopolistic charges against Microsoft are demonstrably untrue.

Of course, I've known this for years. Microsoft's power stems not from its ownership of 90% of the PC operating system market, nor from it's domination of such spaces as the office suite and Web browser. Rather, it comes (or, perhaps, came) from its various strengths: innovation not in mere product features and benefits, but from the applicability of its software to real business and consumer needs; its support of third-party developers and hardware manufacturers; and highly competent businesspeople who simply made better decisions than their competitors.

There are those who might say that Microsoft is weakened, as intended, by the various government actions taken against it as a monopolist. And certainly, one could presume that Microsoft is foregoing various more aggressive actions for fear of further government intervention. If that's true, though, then it merely proves the point that such government action is wrong on its face: it would mean that Google is succeeding not by its own efforts and abilities, but only because it has benefited from government intervention. One is left unable to know whether Google could ever beat Microsoft on a level playing field, and one is also left wondering why so many other companies have failed under similar circumstances.

Personally, I don't believe that Microsoft has been seriously hindered by the attacks against it over the last few decades. Rather, I think that Google vs. Microsoft will reveal the truth that companies win or lose base on their own abilities. I look forward to the fight.

It looks like Serenity will have had another bad showing this weekend. A 51% drop at the box office hurts; I'm far less hopeful for a sequel, let alone two.

Then again, given Wash's death, I'm not sure that I'm all that concerned about seeing more. The death was unnecessary, and seemed more than a little capricious.* It was also disheartening: it demonstrated a certain Naturalistic streak in Joss Whedon that disappointed me, and that ultimately detracts even from my complete enjoyment of the Firefly series itself.

Yes, people die, and they often die in random and meaningless ways. And, certainly, seeing Wash die disabused me of any illusions that the main characters were untouchable as they headed into the final scenes (in a way that Book's death didn't, perhaps because it happened so much earlier in the movie, and because it happened for a reason). There's no doubt that it heightened the sense of drama for me, which may have been Whedon's purpose.

However, I don't go to movies simply to experience another expression of reality; I go to see things as they can and should be. Nor do I go merely to be manipulated by cheap tricks. There are many other ways that Whedon could have impressed upon me the deadly nature of the situation, if the presence of rabid cannibals weren't already enough.

No, I went to see Serenity, as I imagine many other fans did, primarily because I missed the characters as I miss good friends. Seeing one of them die in so meaningless a fashion was nothing but a shock. It contributed nothing to my enjoyment of the film, nor did it manage to generate closure given the series's unfinished business. Instead, it merely left me with a bad taste.

There are other, deeper philosophical issues that I have with the movie, including the seeming transformation of the Alliance from an evil, totalitarian government to one with merely too heightened a sense of caring. However, Wash's death was the principle reason why I didn't go see the movie again; given its performance at the box office, I somehow doubt that I'm the only one.

*I'm not too worried about spoilers at this point, for a couple of reasons. First, I doubt that anyone (at all) will read this. Second, anyone for whom this is truly a spoiler will likely have already seen the movie, and if they haven't, I doubt that it's any longer a secret.

Welcome to the Daily Topic. This is a daily blog, whose only purpose (at this point) is to serve as a mechanism for me to put something down each and every day. It might be insightful, inspired, powerful, or it might be pure drivel. Given my time constraints lately, it'll likely tend toward the latter.

No matter. As long as there's a post (or, more than one; there's no limit), the blog is succeeding. Things like traffic, like people actually visiting the site to read what I write, would be pure gravy. Writing is the goal, not readership. Should I accomplish my greater objective--that is, to become a professional writer--then this site will most likely be abandoned. Such would be to no great loss, I'm sure...

So, without further ado: welcome to the Daily Topic. If you do happen to wander over here, I welcome your comments, good or bad.