How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG ), MSN, Vonage, and others?
How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

Thank you FCC for assisting innovation, competition, and growth. Please line up here to pay your transit tax to ATT.

At SBC, It's All About 'Scale and Scope' (read: monopoly power)

The U.K. government has said the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in a parrot that died in quarantine

Is it just me or does this seem like it should've been an updated Python skit?

U.K. Says H5N1 Form of Bird Flu Found in Dead Parrot

If these mutated particles were to stay high up in the atmosphere, then it would be no big deal. The problem is these particles are so heavy with ickiness that they'll eventually make their way back to ground level, poisoning everyone in their path.

So, not only do we have less freedom as a result of burning the American flag, we have more unnatural forms of freedom, nicknamed "freekdom" by scientists, which slowly poison our society.

THE HANGING STRANGER: What Does Happen When You Burn An American Flag?

Video Games Live will feature the best music and video clips from the most popular games from the beginning of video gaming to the present. Games include:

Mario™, Zelda�, Halo�, Metal Gear Solid�, Warcraft�, Myst�, Final Fantasy�, Castlevania�, Medal of Honor™, Sonic™, Tron, Tomb Raider�, Advent Rising, Headhunter, Beyond Good & Evil™, Splinter Cell�, Ghost Recon™, Rainbow Six�, EverQuest� II and a special retro Classic Arcade Medley featuring over 20 games from Pong� to Donkey Kong� including such classics as Dragon's Lair, Tetris, Frogger, Gauntlet, Space Invaders & Outrun!

It will be a stellar event, which includes performances of the music, video and specially designed laser and light sequences showcasing over 50 different games in a wide variety of styles. Also included of course, is a special segment focusing on retro arcade classics!

I think I just creamed my pants! The Nashville date is Nov 28! Woot!

Video Games Live

As a psychology graduate working in animal- behaviour labs, Seligman discovered "learned helplessness" and became a big name. Dogs who experience electric shocks that they cannot avoid by their actions simply give up trying. They will passively endure later shocks that they could easily escape. Seligman went on to apply this to humans, with "learned helplessness" as a model for depression. People who feel battered by unsolvable problems learn to be helpless; they become passive, slower to learn, anxious and sad. This idea revolutionised behavioural psychology and therapy by suggesting the need to challenge depressed people's beliefs and thought patterns, not just their behaviour.

Now Seligman is famous again, this time for creating the field of positive psychology. In 1997 the professor was seeking a theme for his presidency of the American Psychological Association. The idea came while gardening with his daughter Nikki. She was throwing weeds around and he was shouting. She reminded him that she used to be a whiner but had stopped on her fifth birthday. "And if I can stop whining, you can stop being a grouch."

Seligman describes this as an "epiphany". He vowed to change his own outlook, but more importantly recognised a strength — social intelligence — in his daughter that could be nurtured to help her withstand the vicissitudes of life. Looking back on "learned helplessness", he reflected that one in three subjects — rats, dogs or people — never became "helpless", no matter how many shocks or problems beset them.

"What is it about some people that imparts buffering strength, making them invulnerable to helplessness?" Seligman asked himself — and now he's made it his mission to find out.

Excellent article on controlling your own reality.

So what do you have to do to find happiness?

Still, another problem for investors is that nearly all of the major alternative-energy pure-play firms are early-stage companies with relatively small, albeit rapidly growing, sales and no history of earnings or expectations of profitability in the near future.

So the prices for these stocks look frothy to say the least. Capstone Turbine, for example, has a market value of $347 million even though sales are expected to reach just $24 million next year. So it's trading at 14.5 times estimated revenue.

14.5x isn't that bad when compared with tech stocks or healthcare right now.

Alternative energy stocks have soared during the past month.

But Yzerman has had the rare ability to assess himself and his role in the game without sentiment. He has gone from a player who recorded seven straight seasons of 100 points or more, to a player who learned to lead a team by blocking shots and killing penalties.

God Bless You Steve Yzerman!

Burnside: Yzerman's happy return

The district will get about 780 laptops, as well as iPods, digital cameras and computer software. About 240 of the computers will go to the freshman class of the new Detroit Digital Learning Community High School at Crockett. And another 14 Detroit middle schools will get the remaining laptops, in hopes that many of those students go on to enroll in the new school once they get older.

Excellent!!!

Apple, Detroit schools team up

A deeply flawed redevelopment program has allowed Detroit's historic Brush Park neighborhood to fall into seemingly irreparable disrepair.

Once a community of flourishing town houses and mansions, the district today, according to some experts, should be prime territory for revival given its proximity to downtown Detroit, Comerica Park and Ford Field.

There have been a handful of impressive restorations in the district, along with a successful new housing tract being built by Crosswinds Communities. But the city's development plan, drawn up in 1989 and updated twice, remains largely unfulfilled. It initially called for the construction of 1,500 homes and town houses; the condemnation, purchase and demolition of upwards of 100 buildings; and payment of moving and relocation costs for an estimated 500 people.

The difference between New Orleans and Detroit? It only took 2 days for New Orleans to be a ruined city.

How NOT to rebuild Detroit

Ever since Sam Phillips stuffed some wads of paper into an amplifier, inadvertently creating the fuzzed-up, overdriven electric guitar sound on Ike Turner's 1951 rave-up "Rocket 88," pop musicians and producers have turned happy accidents into great records. But the history of house and techno, in particular, is underpinned with fits of serendipity and creative perversions of recording technology.

aint nothin so great as the eight oh eight!

Six Machines That Changed The Music World