__ Electric Word __
__ End Broadcast Welfare Now __
Call them the welfare kings of the media world - Walt Disney/ABC's Michael Eisner, Fox's Rupert Murdoch, CBS's Michael Jordan, and NBC's Jack Welch (left to right). The Big Four titans of broadcasting are walking off with one of the biggest government handouts in US history - up to US$100 billion worth of free space on the airwaves, in exchange for airing children's programming. (See "The Republican Spectrum Heist," *Wired *4.09, page 41.)
But the TV guys' roll doesn't stop there. Now it appears they may also set the technical standard for digital TV. That has the computer world apoplectic. Microsoft, Apple, Compaq, and others want a standard that paints lines on a screen "progressively," one line after another - like a computer monitor.
But broadcasters favor the "interlaced" method, which scans every other line first - like a TV. An interlaced standard would mean no upgrade costs for broadcasters and no compatibility with today's computers. The FCC, which has hinted it will support the interlaced standard, should announce its decision this fall.
While President Clinton is eager to "change welfare as we know it," broadcasters appear to be dodging any such reform.
Mark Lewyn
__ The White House War on Privacy __
Jumbo jets are falling from the sky, and pipe bombs are exploding in Atlanta. Now the Clinton administration and FBI director Louis Freeh are poised to make privacy rights another casualty of this summer's tragedies. The White House has exploited these incidents to launch a massive "anti-terrorism campaign that would allow for wiretaps on phones of suspected terrorists without a court order and roving wiretaps on suspects at multiple locations. Thankfully, cooler heads in the House passed a more restrained bill without these provisions.
This battle is due to heat up again now that Congress has reconvened for the fall. Privacy activists are bracing for an FBI request for "emergency" wiretap authorization, legislation to outlaw the use of strong encryption, and proposals to expedite funding for the Digital Telephony wiretap expansion.
To get the full lowdown on Bill Clinton's privacy-busting wish list, check out www.cdt.org/policy/terrorism.Then ask yourself: Which is more threatening to my freedom - terrorists or the government fighting these terrorists?
Todd Lappin
__ Invisible Cantilever __
If you can't see something, how do you know it's there? That's the conundrum raised by the* Invisible Cantilever,* artwork created by Ken Goldberg, a UC Berkeley engineering professor, and Karl B�hringer, a Cornell grad student.
Viewable only through a microscope, this 1:1 million scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater mansion www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/flw/, is etched from silicon using integrated circuit technology. With Fallingwater's creation in 1936, Wright pioneered the use of the cantilever - a horizontal structure supported at one end, like a diving board. Cantilevers are now used in industry on a microscale.
Goldberg and B�rhinger hope their work challenges assumptions about art in the digital age. "When the authentic artifact is distant in scale, mediating technology doesn't diminish the experience of aura - it enables it," Goldberg says.
David Pescovitz
__ High Tech Heist in Progress __
The high tech industry would like to report a 211 in progress. Proposition 211, the Attorney-Client Fee Arrangements Initiative on the California ballot for November's elections, claims to protect retirees' pensions from irresponsible institutions. American as apple pie, right? Guess again.
Proposition 211 - the number, coincidentally, police use to call in a robbery - will make California's courts the nation's mecca for a legalized form of stickup: class-action lawsuits triggered by stock fluctuations of volatile high tech companies.
The firm of William Lerach, the wily San Diego trial lawyer who's made millions plying this trade, bankrolled the measure with US$3.6 million.
For Lerach, it's a worthy investment. From 1991 to 1994, high tech companies paid more than $700 million to settle fraud suits. Plaintiff attorneys took upward of $225 million in fees, according to a 1995 Marsh & McLennan study. Lerach's supporters call this success. Intuit cofounder Tom Proulx, a leader of the Proposition 211 opposition, has another name for it: "absolute extortion."
Karen Donovan
__ Hammerhead of the Gods __
Making big movies on a small budget can be tricky, but the kids at Hammerhead Productions think they've got it nailed. "It's simple. We're eliminating the most expensive element - the stars," explains producer Dan Chuba (top right).
Formed last year by Chuba and three former Pacific Data Images compatriots - Thad Beier, Jamie Dixon, and Rebecca Marie (clockwise from bottom right) - the renegade group puts spectacular effects front and center. Their first film, Supernova, arrives next summer. They also bang out software: Hammerhead 2D - a roto, tracking, and morph package - is already an industry staple.
Paula Parisi
__ Who's Minding the Cookie Jar? __
"People don't want to dump their cookies each morning before opening Netscape,"says Lori Fena (right), executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She's talking, of course, about a little text file on your hard drive, called a cookie, which marketing companies can use to track your movements through the Web.
To address privacy concerns about cookies, Fena helped found eTrust. The group is designing and licensing three Web logos - one showing that a Web site maintains full anonymity of its users, one indicating that it may keep data for its own use, and one revealing that it may resell news of your Web wanderlust and other data to third parties. All three are legitimate uses of the Web, Fena notes, but eTrust's stamp informs you of the site's policy. That way, you choose how much personal data you're willing to part with.
Bob Parks
__ Super Mario Rockets into the Game Wars __
*Super Mario 64 *has arrived, and powered by Nintendo's new 64-bit gaming system, he's never looked better. Master designer Shigeru Miyamoto has crafted breathtaking visuals and dreamlike play.
Nintendo claims shipment of 800,000-plus units in Japan, but some analysts predict a rougher US ride. "Nintendo is coming in a little bit behind," says Vincent Turzo of Jefferies & Co. He predicts Nintendo sales of around 400,000, one-quarter the projections for Sega and Sony's 32-bit players.
The high cost of the Nintendo cartridge format (more than triple that of CD-ROMs) could also cost it developers. Nintendo's betting they'll settle for less now in hopes of more later. In the meantime - from the players' point of view - Super Mario's future couldn't look brighter.
Joe Hutsko
__ Slate Gets Stale __
Leave it to a former *Spy *magazine staffer to figure out that good 'ol boy Michael Kinsley's *Slate is an anagram for stale. *This August, Daniel Radosh (at right), with Michael Tritter and a posse of New York freelancers, launched the *Slate *parody *Stale (www.stale.com/). *In opening, *Stale *editor Michael Kindling writes *"Stale *is not the first 'webzine,' but it is the first that feels the need to put words like 'webzine' in quotes." Roundtable discussions such as "Is Microsoft Evil?" include Satan and Evel Knievel. "Slate'sattitude felt like the colonists coming to the new world and saying this would be great if the natives just put on some clothes," says Radosh. "Slate is the Starbucks of the Web. It's good coffee, but sterile and unnecessary."
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt
__ Telerobotic Moon Rovers __
Only 12 humans have set foot on the moon. Now, David Gump wants to bring lunar exploration to everyone - not just those with the "right stuff" - through telerobotic rovers controlled from a theme park on Earth.
His Arlington, Virginia-based company, LunaCorp., plans to send twin robotic rovers to the moon in 1999, launched by International Space Enterprises, a joint venture of Russian space and rocket concerns that landed robotic craft on the moon in the 1970s. Developing the rovers is Carnegie Mellon University robotics expert William Whittaker, whose robots navigated the radioactive Three Mile Island facility.
The mission will cost US$200 million, financed by a consortium of TV, theme park, and corporate sponsors Gump is assembling. So far, Mitsubishi and Daimler-Benz have signed on. For more info, see www.lunacorp.com/.
Dave Cravotta
__ Babewatch __
The national teen pregnancy clock serves as a reminder that the state of adolescence today is more *Kids *than *Clueless. *The clock, part of the Web site for the nonprofit advocacy group Campaign for Our Children, ticks away the statistics: every 26 seconds another US teenager becomes pregnant, every hour, 56 babies are born to adolescent mothers.
Since launching in April, the site has also been offering educational information, news, links to resources on the Web, and, perhaps most useful, arenas for visitors and experts to exchange questions and advice. "We wanted to build a site that would be a nexus for community rather than just a place to get information," explains creator Sean Carton. He hopes the site encourages and educates parents to talk to their kids. Liberal or conservative, pro-choice or pro-life, while you can't stop time, you can slow down the clock. See www.cfoc.org/.
Mary Elizabeth Williams
__ The Extra Eye __
If opposition research is the dark side of mudslinging campaigns, then Competitive Media Reporting's Ad Detector has the killer app. Using some 75 computers, Ad Detector monitors 80 percent of US media markets. A digital fingerprint for an NRA ad in Chicago or a Clinton spot lambasting Dole in San Diego is captured and archived for interested, paying parties. Television advertising can suck campaign treasuries dry, so it pays to know what a competitor is spending - and where.Republican consulting group National Media adapted the technology to the political arena by value adding demographic and gross rating information to provide a "strategic package. It pulls down commercials 24 hours a day, and we slice 'em and dice 'em here," says National Media's Evan Tracey (at right).
