 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Iowa's Digital Prairie Project
At the National Governors' Association meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, D, told National Journal's Technology Daily that Iowa is planning to putting satellite dishes on grain silos to host a myriad of wireless services coming to the state. The project, "Prairie I-Net," is being led by Iowans who had moved out to Silicon Valley to join the tech revolution in California, but returned home.
Vilsack said one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome with a rural state is to enable smaller, more out-of-reach communities with technology and Internet access. With this in mind, Iowa has undertaken the "Digital Community Fund" initiative, which aims to provide funding to smaller communities for technological advancement. By 2003, Vilsack said, the state hopes to have moved all government services online. He said the state's fiber-optic system also is a subject of hot debate, as the state tries to wire Internet access in every school, health facility, library and its 850 communities with a population of fewer than 1,000 residents.
New York ISP Guilty As Charged
As a result of a two-year investigation, a New York Internet service provider (ISP) has pleaded guilty to criminal facilitation in a landmark child porn case, according to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office. Buffnet, a large regional ISP based in West Seneca outside of Buffalo, pleaded guilty to the crime of facilitation in the fourth degree, a class A misdemeanor. The company admitted that it failed to take action when it was notified by both law enforcement and a customer that one of the newsgroups it hosted was distributing child porn.
"This case establishes a common sense standard for the Internet," Spitzer said in a statement. "When an ISP becomes aware of illegal child pornography available in its system, the ISP cannot put its head in the sand."
Spitzer stressed that Buffnet's plea in no way restricted the rights of artistic and First Amendment expression, communicated over the Internet or otherwise.
ACLU Takes On Florida Voting Reform
In the wake of the presidential election debacle that left thousands of Florida voters wondering if their votes were counted, the American Civil Liberties Union on Feb. 17 announced the launch of a new project geared toward ensuring the counting of every vote. The "Equal Voting Rights Project," organized by other groups such as Florida Legal Services and the Florida Justice Institute, will, among other things, ensure state compliance with the national "motor voter" law, monitor the technology proposals to ensure both a uniform voting system and a system that does not unfairly disenfranchise poor or minority communities and will create a Florida Voter's Bill of Rights.
The project was made possible by a $300,000 grant from the Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation. Steven Kirsch is the former chairman of Infoseek, the Internet search engine acquired by the Walt Disney Co. Kirsch recommended the foundation's board of directors support the ACLU's efforts with hopes of establishing a model for electoral reform nationwide.
"While it appears the state is making some efforts to address technological concerns, the reforms that are needed go beyond changes in voting technology," said ACLU Executive Director Howard Simon in a statement. "Every citizen who voted by the punch card process has reason to be anxious about whether his or her voter was accurately recorded. But not all of the problems that last November's election uncovered will be solved by updating the technology of voting."
CalVoter.org Gets A Facelift
The California Voter Foundation (CVF) has added to new pages to its Web site, featuring information about voting systems and voting technology in California. The pages are adaptations of charts provided by the Assembly Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee, which included the data in packets distributed at its January hearing on voting technology.
The first page lists the various types of voting machines used in the state, followed by the names of counties that use those machines. The chart also shows the number of registered voters in each county, along with the total number of registered voters in the state using each type of voting machine. The second page shows the percentage of undervotes and overvotes in California's November 2000 election. Both of these charts, as well as additional material on voting technology, can be accessed through CVF's voting technology page.
The Chicago Tech Drain
Although several high-tech giants like MCI, Netscape, Oracle and U.S. Robotics have roots in the Chicago area, the city has consistantly watched them pack-up and leave for more tech-friendly regions, the Chicago Tribune reports. Journalist Peter Theis wrote that "our business community consistently fails to see that high-tech entrepreneurial enterprises and Chicago's business leaders are inextricably linked," and that "if it is ever to be on the cutting edge, the Chicago tech industry needs independent technological resources and the resolve to ensure that technology isn't just developed elsewhere and brought here secondhand."
Theis also addressed the practice of buying locally as a way to keep tech businesses in the area. He cites regions such as Boston, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, as examples of these success stories. "I have seen far too many Chicago-area firms more willing to support out-of-state centers than to back more technologically advanced local entrepreneurial endeavors."
Pennsylvania Schools Get Great Tech Grades
Three Pennsylvania schools districts have been awarded up to $2 million each to integrate technology into their students' day-to-day learning. As part of the "Digital School Districts" program, Republican Gov. Tom Ridge announced the winners last week as the Carlisle area school districts in Cumberland County, the Quaker Valley district in Allegheny County and the Spring Cove school district in Blair County.
"We need to rethink how we teach and how we learn in Pennsylvania and this country — we need to invent the future of education," Ridge said last week.
- by Liza Porteus
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
