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Friday evening, approximately 8:14 PM

Drug Dealer: Psssst. My man, lookin’ for some smoke?
Me: No thanks.
DD: (pointing at my bicycle) Hey, you guys meetin’ down here tonight?
Me: Well, we were in Union Square, but the cops were getting the orange net ready, so most people split. Some of us came down here.
DD: (looking at the police helicopter hovering overhead) Shit man, you’d think y’all was some terrorists or something by the way they treat you. Its bullshit. Take it easy… (walks towards another guy) Pssst. My man, lookin’ for some smoke?

I find it a bit odd that while van loads of cops poured into the Washington Square area to stop a “bicycle procession”, dealers were still freely selling their products in the park. 17 cyclists were arrested on Friday night, how many drug dealers were arrested in Washington Square? I’m guessing none.

A bill has been introduced to city council that would require all cyclists sixteen and older to register their bicycles with the city. The city would then issue some sort of license plate. The punishment for not having said plate would be extreme, up to a $300 fine and/or up to 15 days in jail! Of course, the offending bike would be impounded as well.

This bill seems to have little value for the public and would only serve to make cycling in the city more difficult. The city has made a lot of progress in the last several years towards being more bike friendly. Ridership is up, why introduce legislation to make it more difficult to ride? The city should actively encourage more people to use bicycles. Transportation Alternatives points out that the more bicycles there are on road the safer it is to ride. We shouldn’t be passing laws that will reduce the number of riders thereby decreasing rider safety. Enforcement of this ridiculous law would also pose problems. The police have better things to do than to bust bicycles with missing license plates. Plus, they seem more than happy to restrict their bicycle harassment to the last Friday of the month anyway.

It is interesting to note that one of the bill’s sponsors, Councilwoman Madeline Provenzano from the Bronx, does not seem to be an advocate for bicyclists. In 2002, she opposed some bike lanes in the Bronx. Earlier this year, she successfully lobbied to get parking tickets voided for automobiles that were partially obstructing bike lanes. She is also the chair of the housing and buildings committee that is sitting on a bill that would require bicycle access to buildings.

If you are opposed to this bill, please let someone know about it. You can send a fax to Madeline Provenzano directly from the Transportation Alternatives website. You could also send a message to your local council member letting them know how you feel. If you don’t how to reach your council member, you can get City Council information on the New York City website.

via Matt Law

News.com reports that Overture is experimenting with advertising in RSS feeds. The content targeted ads have started to appear in some full text feeds provided by FeedBurner.

A group of students from Agawam High School in Massachusetts have invented RoadIron, a pothole detection and prevention device. The best part is that it detects potholes before they become gaping craters. RoadIron uses ground penetrating radar to detect potential potholes below the road surface, then it drills a small hole and fills the cavity with a polymer. If you want all the details, the full report (PDF) is available for your perusal.

via Engadget

The songs that were available on the Wired Magazine CD a couple weeks ago are also available for download at the Creative Commons site. Lots of good stuff there including Paul Westerburg, Chuck D, Beastie Boys, Le Tigre and David Byrne. Next week, people will be able to post their mashups to the site as well.

News.com reports that Verizon Wireless is offering custom ringback tones to their customers in Southern California. So, rather than hearing the familiar tone of a call ringing through to the number you dialed, you can hear a tune of the dialed party’s choosing. Depending on how you look at this, it is either a fun new feature, or really irritating. The irritation factor is based entirely on the musical tastes of the person being called I guess. Of course, it is only a matter of time before this technology is used to blast the caller with some sort of marketing message before the first ring.

Dirtbag (Eastside Mel-O Remix) [2.9 MB MP3] is my first attempt at remixing a song. You can find the original version of Dirtbag on the Brad Sucks website along with his other songs. Brad makes the sources of his recordings available so that others can remix his songs. Thanks Brad!

The FCC has stated that voice over IP should not be subject to state regulation. That’s good news for VoIP customers and great news for VoIP providers.

John Borland goes on to talk a bit about the inconsistent regulation of different communication mediums in this article. He’s right, the current regulations are quite inconsistant. Verizon and Vonage are offering pretty much the same service to the residential customer—the ability to make and receive voice calls—yet Verizon is regulated and Vonage is not. He doesn’t call for any more (or less) regulation, but does point to another article that advocates a more layered approach to regulation. From what I understand, this approach to regulation would be more consistent in that it regulates the type of service rather than how the service is delivered whether it is through analog phone lines, broadband, fiber or otherwise.

This is an interesting way to regulate, but I’m not sure if consistency would be the end result. More and more communication is taking place through IP networks. Today we are thinking about the difference between voice over IP and other data traffic. However, what is voice over IP if not purely data. If the FCC or some other regulatory body begins to differentiate between the different types of data we are sending over the wire, things are going to get messy. If “voice” is to be regulated no matter how it is sent, does that apply to all voice communications, or just those that terminate to a phone number? What about Skype, IChat AV, Podcasts, or two cans and a string for that matter? If voice is to be regulated differently than other data, then what about other data types? Will sending an image across the wire require a different type of regulation than text? The regulations do need to be rewritten, but I don’t think differentiating the actual data is the way to go.

The awaited 1.0 release of Firefox is available today. Apparently all the excitement has resulted in some server slowness. Even with all the talk lately about Firefox, its market share is still dwarfed by that of MSIE. I wonder if the combination of the 1.0 release and some advertising will result in more people using this browser? I’ve been sold on Firefox for awhile, but have had little luck in convincing friends to make the switch. I did overhear some non-tech types talking about “this new open source browser” today at work, so perhaps Firefox is poised to surpass the other browsers on the market.

It seems that everyone, including me, is hoping for a decisive election tonight. If it is, there is sure to be some post election depression. So, what to do with ourselves after all the excitement is over? Worldchanging has an essay that offers some suggestions:

…Because when it comes to solving the real problems facing this planet, neither party in American politics can claim the high ground, or even, to put it bluntly, much grounding in reality at all. In this first presidential election of the 21st Century, a realistic understanding of the problems we face as a planet and the role the U.S. could and should play in solving them should have been a matter of daily debate. Instead, we’ve gotten saber-rattling and name-calling. But pandering to the worst inclinations of the American electorate doesn’t make any of us safer or the world more stable. This year, the entire political establishment has failed grotesquely to speak plainly about the objective realities of the world…

This is a great essay from a great site, and it is definitely worth a read. Lets hope we, as a country, can get to work on some of these issues in the coming years.