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Welcome
to REASON Express, the weekly e-newsletter from REASON magazine.
REASON Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor
and draws on the ideas and resources of the REASON editorial staff. For
more
information on REASON, visit our Web site at www.reason.com.
Send your comments about REASON Express to Jeff A. Taylor (jtaylor@reason.com)
and REASON Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com).
REASON Express
May 22, 2001
Vol. 4 No. 21
1) Energy Bar None
2) Home Run Power Means Never Having to Go to Jail
3) AOL vs. Microsoft: The Way It Should Be
4) Got Game?
5) Quick Hits
- - Powered Up - -
It's a shame that the Bush Administration has released anything remotely
like a 170-page Energy Policy. But with the feds calling the shots on
everything from the number of natural gas pipelines to the ingredients in
gasoline, a default energy policy is already out there.
The Bush team should get credit for patting all the children on the head
and telling them, "Conservation is nice. Conservation is wonderful.
But we can't conserve everything we need."
Also, promises to rein in the arcane federal permitting process for new
power plants and to nix clean-air requirements for hard-to-refine-and-ship
"boutique" gasolines are good things. Such plans also have the
virtue of not needing too much help from Congress to get done.
But much of the rest of the program falls in the category of utter
cracksmokery.
Energy tax credits crawl out of the tomb from which Jimmy Carter first
summoned them: Homeowners who purchase solar panels would get a tax credit
of
15 percent. How about a 25 percent credit for homes with superior roof
venting? That's certainly a pressing need and much more bang for the buck,
too.
And apparently oblivious to the experience of Arizona, which nearly saw
the entire state budget eaten up by a wacky tax incentive for hybrid
vehicles, Bush wants to give tax credits for the purchase of high-mileage,
hybrid, or fuel cell vehicles. We can pretty clearly thank former auto
company lobbyist and current White House chief-of-staff Andy Card for that
goodie.
Better to remember that if it needs tax subsidies, it isn't efficient. And
if it isn't efficient, it isn't going to save any energy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4
2053-2001May17.html
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/articles
/energyhighlights051801.ht
m
The full text of report, in Adobe PDF format, is at
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcr
ipts/energyreport051701.pdf
*********************************************************
- - Strawberry Fields - -
One feature of the War on Drugs that saps support even from staunch
law-and-order types is its arbitrary outcomes. Get caught in a house when
a
U.S. attorney is running a big sweep and you might die in prison.
Continually give up supposed "bigger" dealers to an agency
desperate for arrests and you might never spend a night a jail.
The case of Darryl Strawberry demonstrates another perversion: The higher
your social status and the better your material success, the more likely
you are to be treated kindly by the system.
"You are at bat in the bottom of the ninth with two strikes against
you. You are a proven winner on the field. Now you must prove you are a
winner off the
field," a fawning Circuit Judge Florence Foster said during
Strawberry's sentencing in a Florida courtroom.
The punishment for Strawberry, 39, didn't consist of much more than
listening to the judge lace her language with inane baseballisms. The
slugger was ordered into a treatment program for two years, as he had
requested. That's not bad service, considering that Strawberry has five
times violated the terms of his release on a 1999 conviction for drug
possession and solicitation of prostitution.
"We're just hoping he gets the help he needs," former New York
Yankee teammate Derek Jeter said. "It's not like he's a danger to
society."
Except that Strawberry was also sentenced in another courtroom that day to
43 days in jail for violating his probation on a charge of leaving the
scene of an accident. The charge stemmed from a case in November where
Strawberry, driving under the influence of painkillers, hit another car
and a street sign. Judge James Dominguez gave Strawberry credit for the
time he has spent under
arrest in the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital.
What the current system cannot process is the fact that Strawberry's drug
use need not, in and of itself, constitute a threat to life and property
of
others. Given the choice between punishing two actions, sitting alone
smoking rock or piloting a potential murderous weapon, the state lets the
latter slide in service of attacking Strawberry's desire to smoke crack.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2001/0516/1200216.
html
**********************************************************- - The Perfect
Storm - -
For some months now, it has been clear that Microsoft's foes will once
again try to spur regulators to take action against the firm. This time
the engine is the new Windows XP operating systems that MS plans to ship
in October.
But now that diffuse anti-Redmond coalition is crystallizing into a direct
battle between MS and AOL Time Warner. That would be a big improvement.
The most direct conflict is the instant messaging feature that WinXP will
have, a challenge to AOL's lead in that field. In addition, MS's new
MediaPlayer will also be tightly connected to the operating system and
will try to manage various streaming and playback functions that AOL likes
to
control.
Even deeper is MS's promise that the Hailstorm architecture, due in 2002,
will be everything a user needs to manage Web-based commerce. AOL likes to
manage commerce for its members, thank you very much, so there is
potential for
conflict there, too.
And Redmond's game console, the Xbox, is heading for living rooms. Once
there it'll find Sony's Playstation2 capable of running AOL software.
AOL is responding to the new MS tech in a variety of ways. It is dropping
large hints that anti-trust cops should keep on eye on Redmond; it is also
building a wall around itself, via actions like switching all 86,000
employees of AOL Time Warner to AOL email. (That way, no nasty copies of
MS Outlook to worry about.)
Most interesting, AOL is studying the feasibility of issuing its own
operating system, or at least parts of an OS. A new piece of software,
code-named "Taz," is rumored to be able to replace some WinXP
default functions and do things
such as swap AOL Netscape for Internet Explorer as the default Web browser
and replace Microsoft Messenger with AOL's Instant Messenger client.
This last course of action, provided it is clearly disclosed to consumers
so they can make an informed choice, is exactly the kind of competition
that puts consumers in the driver's seat. Two large, well-funded firms,
each with distinct strengths and weaknesses, bidding to bring better
service to wide array of consumers could finally usher in the next
generation of personal computing.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/9742.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5945994.ht
ml?tag=st.ne.ron.lthd
**********************************************************
- - Indoor Games - -
The reason why AOL and Microsoft seem destined to clash over consumers'
play time comes in survey results from the Interactive Digital Software
Association, a trade organization of computer and video game companies.
The survey found that the typical family plays computer games 10 to 11
hours per week, up an hour from last year. What's more, the average
American household has two console gamers players and 2.5 computer gamers.
Plus, gaming is spreading out to personal digital assistants like
PalmPilots and fancy cell phones at the same time that online gaming grows
at a 5 percent annual clip. Pretty soon, constant gaming may be achieved.
But unless gamers have found a way to suspend temporal laws, the time
spent gaming has to come from somewhere. And that place should have
traditional media companies very scared: 41 percent of gamers report less
time going to
the movies, 36 percent watch less television, and 35 percent rent fewer
movies.
In short, electronic gaming is rapidly becoming a mainstream cultural
activity. Certainly when The New Yorker dispatches a reporter to look into
the
Ultima Online mega-game and discovers that nearly 250,000 pay a monthly
fee to keep a character in a cyber spin-off of Dungeons and Dragons the
fringe doesn't seem so far away--and pretty profitable.
One question these numbers suggest is whether traditional media companies
notice that those gaming eyeballs could mean money. Could one do
advertising within games? Product placement? What would gaming ads be
worth? Or would ads
in games be so resented that they would generate negative returns?
These kinds of unknowns guarantee more restructuring among the media
giants.
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/news/0,10
870,2761898,00.html
http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/
*********************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"There are a lot of agendas at play," House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.), on the failure of a European
Parliament delegation seeking info on the Echelon spy system to meet with
Bush administration officials. The National Security Agency
"respectfully declined" to meet with the EU delegation.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/165842.html
- - We Want the Airwaves - -
The Federal Communications Commission inexplicably barks up the wrong tree
in search of an answer to the mysterious keyless remote outages in Oregon.
Common sense seems to suggest that military traffic around the port city
of Bremerton
is to blame, but the FCC and the Pentagon say no.
http://www.bremertonsun.com/news/2001/may/051
31keyless.html
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid
- - Blown Save - -
The official state report on the Columbine shootings concludes that the
year-long preparations of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold "should have
been discovered" by authorities. The Jefferson County, Colorado
sheriff's office
was singled out for blame for failing to follow up warnings about Harris,
and law enforcement in general for the slow response to the crime.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/columbi
ne/article/0,1299,DRMN_106_500131
,00.html
The full report on Columbine is at http://www.state.co.us/columbine/
- - Wire Guides - -
It's Vegas: strippers, the mob, superhacker Kevin Mitnick, and, just
maybe, a phone system that has been completely compromised.
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.htm
l?id=205
- - Motionless - -
The music industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative lost all forward
momentum with the announcement that it members still cannot agree on an
anti-piracy
technology.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5973897.h
tml?tag=mn_hd
- - Another Way - -
Software developers in Perth, Australia, promise a new open-source Web
browser before the end of the year. The No Limits browser would allow
users to choose either speed or compatibility with pages optimized for
other browsers.
http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,110
11,2761806,00.html
- - Fallen Empire - -
Another Bell competitor for local phone service dies, this time in the
heart of New York City. OnSite Access, which got a $25 million infusion
from AT&T last year and had rewired the Empire State building and the
Chrysler building for 21st-century service, has filed for bankruptcy
protection.
http://www.nypost.com/technology/40395.htm
######################################
REASON NEWS
Do More Guns Mean Less Crime? All this week, check out reason.com's online
debate between John R. Lott, Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime, and
Robert Ehrlich, author of Nine Crazy Ideas in Science.
The Scene! Check out Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel's frequently
updated observations on current events and ideas. Visit The Scene at
http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html
For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit
http://www.reason.com/press.html.
#######################################
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