November 2004

The Death Of Bpl

Michaal Giberson The future of broadband over power lines (BPL) may depend upon the outcome of a battle between an irresistible object and an immovable object. In this case the irresistible object is the potential value created by deployment of BPL, and the immovable object is the well-established law and principles of regulatory ratemaking. Ray …

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Shopping, Style, And Snobbery: We’re Lucky

Lynne Kiesling In catching up on the mail and newspaper yesterday after returning home, I was excited to read Virginia Postrel’s Wall Street Journal Weekend section column on shopping and fashion magazines (subscription required). Virginia sees an independence and creativity in the emergence and popularity of shopping magazines relative to old fashion stalwarts like Vogue …

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Profile Of Ronald Coase, And His Penguin … ?

Lynne Kiesling Thanks to the invaluable Will Wilkinson for his link to this U. of C. Chronicle article profiling Ronald Coase: Coase said that ?it?s very difficult to imagine a system that would work better than one with private property rights and a market: mechanisms that have proved themselves repeatedly against regimes where central authority …

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Trackback Enabled

Lynne Kiesling One nice thing about the MT 3.1 upgrade is that the TrackBack function is much more intuitive and painless. So we’re TrackBackers now here at KP … There is still some goofy stuff with the Java scripting, and it sure looks different depending on the OS and the browser I use. But so …

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New Mt Installation

Lynne Kiesling So far, so good on the MT 3.1 installation. MT-Blacklist plugin and import of the blacklist have gone well. The only goofy thing still going on is that the java scripting for the buttons down the left side of the management and posting pages has made the buttons all overlap. But it’s manageable. …

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Patent Reform II

Lynne Kiesling [NOTE: this post is a continuation of the immediately preceding one.] The second Economist article (subscription required) goes into more detail regarding the problems and proposed reforms. First, the article usefully references Innovation and Its Discontents, a new book on patenting by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner (two of the most knowledgeable IP …

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