Last Monday, I started a new job as a Research Associate at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. I've commented on two blog postings (1 2) and today we just released a "Progress on Point" bulletin regarding the recent FCC decision against Comcast for violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement that I helped with.

I just signed Rock the Vote's Young Voter Platform and wrote the following comment for the nominees: Copyright reform is again becoming in issue in Congress (see this and this) but hasn't made it onto the presidential radar (see this or this). Freedom of expression is meaningless without a common language. True, the alphabet and common words are not copyrighted. But the common language of modern culture is made up of sound bites and video clips. Should Howard Dean have been able to claim copyright over his famous scream to prevent its circulation? Should companies be able to stifle criticism by having Internet Service Providers remove user-created materials simply because they're critical of those companies? The next President needs to understand these issues and needs to make his positions known. In order to earn my vote, a Presidential candidate must recognize that fair use is critically important, that there are numerous non-infringing uses for peer-to-peer networks, and that universities should not be the police force for the music and movie industries.

BTW - Did you know fair use accounts for 1/6 of the entire U.S. GDP

I had something of about 1300 characters that I wanted to post somewhere, and the "Wall" on Facebook has a limit of 1000 characters. So I re-animated this blog that I originally created 8 years ago to document my experiences while I spent a month in The Bahamas (yes, "The" is part of the country's full name). Now it will cover a much wider variety of topics. I foresee the following topics: Product reviews and general consumer grumbling; copyright/tech/media policy issues; rock climbing; politics (not necessarily in that order).

I've finally got the pictures up on Yahoo Photos. And it only took me a week! In case you're curious, all pictures were taken with a FujiFilm FinePix 1300 1.3 megapixel digital camera.

Just a very quick note to say that I'm back in Florida, staying with my folks for a month. I'm going to get laser eye surgery this Friday, and then I need to hang around for a buch of check-up visits. As soon as the doctor says I'm OK to go, I'll be driving back to DC.

I've been busy hanging out with friends and eating out, and I haven't had a chance to upload all my pictures. I will soon, and I'll post a note here. In the meantime, for those who didn't already know about it, you might enjoy the pictures I already have online at http://photos.yahoo.com/mcsquared88. Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Did you miss me? I'm alive and having a great time. Andros island is nothing like New Providence (AKA Nassau). My first week and a half or so was kind of boring. The hoteliers were just too busy running the hotels to spend time with me and the computers. I did get to do a good deal of diving, but as I said, I won't bore you all with the details ;)

I did meet some cool people at the Forfar Institute. They had met Tray, the other volunteer at a different hotel, and were calling around trying to find him to fix their computer. They managed to find me instead. So in exchange for the 4 hours I spent re-imaging their computer and getting their Internet connection working again, they let me join them for a snorkling day trip and late-afternoon dive trip. Both the snorkling and diving was excellent!

This past Thursday, I transfered to Small Hope Bay Lodge, which is simultaneously the most technologically advanced and most remote hotel I've worked with. Do check the Web site, it's a beautiful place and the people and food are as good as the diving.

Tomorrow (Sunday), I'm going to a wedding of two of the people I met a Forfar: Joe and Heather. I'm up this late (it's now about 12:45am) because I'm working with one of the divemasters here at Small Hope Bay to create some CDs of music as a wedding gift. I've been working 10 hour days since I got here, so I'm plenty tired. But since Jeff (the general manager at Small Hope) has told me that I can dive when I'm not working, I'm trying to get the work done as quickly as possible ;)

Small Hope is the first place I've stayed at that doesn't have air conditioning in the rooms, but they do have A/C in the office. It's also the only place with a serious bug problem. I think I'm going to go thru a full container of bug repellant before the week is up.

Although this has been a fantastic experience, I'm looking forward to being home again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

When I finally get home, I'll have a chance to upload all my pictures and I'll add a link to this blog.

Stay tuned!

So I'm about due for my weekly post, especially considering I'm going to Andros tomorrow and I expect that Internet access won't be as convenient.

First let me remind everyone that I'm a big fat looser. I didn't go to any clubs last week. I finally went to the Zoo (the name of a club) for about 3 hours last night, and I didn't speak to anyone. I had 2 beers, I stood, I listened to the music, and I watched the crowd. Pretty tame stuff. It was a fun place, and I'd recommend it to anyone, but as much as I thought I wanted to get my groove on, when I got there I realized I ain't got no groove.

I should just rename this blog to 'My Summer Job.' I typically work an 8-hour day, though it's not a very difficult job. This week has been very quiet. I've spent most of my time puttering with the computers, and almost no time training. I swapped the back office computer with the owners' home computer, which also involved swapping the network card and CD burner. I got the 2 computers on the LAN to see each other again. I finally downloaded some CD burning software and created a simple backup system using batch files. And I figured out their 7-year old DOS-based reservations/billing software so I could purge out about 12,000 old records that were bogging down the software to a snail's pace. Note - If you didn't understand any of that, that's quite OK. In a nutshell, I puttered around with computers for a week.

I did go diving again this past Sunday, and it was the nicest diving yet (except for the shark dive). The first dive was a pretty standard wreck at about 45 feet, but it was a small bunch of divers so I took my buddy and went exploring a bit further out from the group. We were rewarded when we spotted a beautiful 6-foot nurse shark. I was about to tap her tail when she decided she had had enough of us and swam off. The second dive was no deeper than 20 feet, and it was described to us before-hand as a wreck. It was more of a debris field than a wreck. My navigation skills allowed us to do a big circle around the area without getting lost. We found another small nurse shark wedged under some wreckage, and tons of fish. I have never seen parrotfish so big. They were bigger than my head.

The coolest part of the dive was the very end. I was tired of swimming, we were almost right under the dive boat, and it was about time to surface. I decided to just sit down on the main portion of the wreckage and just watch the fish around me. I was looking at the wreckage in front of me, and I noticed a tiny spotted eel was staring back at me. I found this guy completely at random. Whoa.

So maybe I should say a bit more about my daily life. I've been a pretty happy camper this week because I got a remote for the TV. Evidently, the hotels keep the remotes at the front desk and normally give them out when you check in. At the first hotels, they didn't bother to give me a remote. Actually, they didn't bother to give me one at this hotel either, but I noticed the basket when I was working and asked about it.

All of the hotels have had either cable or satellite, and I'm talking about 50 or so channels. The funny thing is that they have most of the South Florida stations. Channel 7 news is pretty incredible. People used to joke that their motto was "If it bleeds, it leads." It's not really a joke. When there isn't enough crime locally, they have a segment called "Off the Satellite" where they talk about crime around the country. I think their new motto should be "Crime all the time." I think the point of network news is to scare people into never leaving their homes.

Speaking of leaving homes, I don't do much of that myself. I did walk around downtown Nassau once or twice this past week, But unless you're shopping for liquor, jewelry, or perfume, there isn't much to do in downtown Nassau. Although the library is around the corner, and I actually passed it last night, I wasn't interested in exploring. Like I said, I'm a looser. I haven't even used the hotel pool since my first week.

I think I'll be doing more of the sun and sand thing in Andros. The hotel I was at my first week was right on the water, and I expect that to be the norm in Andros.

I really should start working, so look for another post from me some time next week.

A few things I should mention:

Most of these Weblogs were typed on my laptop late in the evening in my hotel room, saved to a floppy disk, and then pasted into the Blogger.com editing Web page the next day. In this way, I can spend a minimum of time on the hotel computers.

Victor - Don't despair, I'm sure I'll need your services when I'm on Andros island starting the 22nd.

Take care!

7:33 PM 6/11/2002

I've been reading the book "Nerds 2.0.1" by Stephen Segaller. Reading about all the 20-something multimillionaires is a bit humbling. Actually, it's kind of depressing. I remember all the aunts and uncles referring to me as the next Bill Gates when I was younger. Now I'm a 27-year old grad student with negative income.

The more I read the book the more I felt like I was unable to predict a future trend. Then I thought about my current day job: teaching Internet skills to small hotel operators in the Bahamas. Today, I explained everything from decentralized computing to DNS to the difference between HTTP and HTML in less than an hour. Is that belittling decades of achievement, or just a way of coping with a student who's falling asleep right in front of me. Seven years ago people were talking about the international growth of the Internet. I'm sure there will continue to be people who make a good living out of spreading the gospel of TCP/IP such as I'm doing (albeit as an unpaid volunteer).

But if I had to pick something that I think will be the next "big thing," it would be digital rights management. DRM, as it's commonly referred to is the emerging software and hardware systems for restricting the ways customers can use intellectual property (music, movies, books, software, etc.) that they have purchased. DRM scares me because I see myself as much more of a consumer than a creator of intellectual property (IP). I don't *want* to be restricted.

Ted Nelson's original vision for Xanadu was of a system that maintained owners rights and used micropayments to reimburse them. The RIAA claims that major media owners are reluctant to make their libraries available online because of the fear of rampant piracy. William Gibson talks of a virtual future where skimmers get paid for useful data that they add to a global encyclopedia of everything.

In the paper that I wrote [stopped here for the night]

10:21 PM 6/12/2002

[continued]

In a paper that I wrote for Professor Singh's final exam in my "Intro to Cross-Disciplinary Studies" class last Fall, I described a utopian future where micropayments and weblogs fueled a personal publishing revolution. If there's a business opportunity, maybe that's it.

Considering that it's a day later and I was about to write some more for my Weblog anyways, I think it's opportune to include my observations on keeping a Weblog - it doesn't take the place of a phone call or conversation. The reason for this is that there's no feedback. Maybe that's because I told everyone that I couldn't respond to email. But I don't think email would be enough. But how can you form a community around micropayments? And how do you reconcile the ISP industry switch from pay-per-hour to flat-rate dial-up access with peoples refusal to pay for subscription-based Web sites? Where do micropayments fit in? Do they fit in?

10:27 PM 6/12/2002 - More on life in the Bahamas

Rain. The past few days have consisted of little more than work and rain. I went diving Sunday morning (much more on that later), and the rain started during the bus ride back to my hotel. I'm not exaggerating much when I say that the rain didn't stop until this afternoon. Blech! Sure, I could have paid about $15 each way for a taxi, but when it rains all day, there's not much enthusiasm for going out at night.

I should say more about going out at night. First, let me apologize if I repeat. I don't have the benefit of re-reading my past Weblog entries while I write this. I'm sitting in my hotel room writing this on my laptop, and I plan to email it to Victor when I have some spare time tomorrow.

Going out - The first thing you must understand is the geography. To my tourist sensibilities, there is basically one road on this island. It goes from somewhere past downtown Nassau to the East, thru the central jewelry and t-shirt tourist district, past a series of beaches, hotels, timeshares, and condos, then past the Cable Beach strip, and then past the two hotels I've stayed at so far and then further West on the island. There is a bus route that runs from West of me to downtown. There are other bus routes and other roads, but they don't really matter to the tourist.

There are a few points of interest: Paradise Island is great if you're staying at one of the hotels on the island, but I hear that they're very strict about keeping non-paying guests off their property. If you just want to spend the day enjoying the pools and beaches, you actually have to pay for a day pass bracelet. There are also no busses that go between PI and the mainland, so it's taxis or a long walk over a tall bridge. So far, I've only made one trip to PI. It was on the complimentary shuttle bus for the Junkanoo in June festival. I took the bus from the festival, to PI, and then right back. I got the bus driver to drop me off on the Cable Beach strip before he headed back to the festival for another run.

The strip - What I refer to as the strip is the section of Cable Beach that contains the Crystal Palace casino, Radisson, Marriott, and Nassau Beach hotel. On the ends of this strip are Sandals and Breezes, but Sandals doesn't seem to welcome pedestrians and Breezes wasn't too impressive. Besides the casino (I don't gamble, so this isn't to interesting to me), there's a very nice pool behind the Marriott. I haven't had a chance to go on a Saturday afternoon to enjoy it but I'd definitely like to. In front of the Nassau Beach Hotel is Johnny Canoe. This is a really great bar/restaurant. If you go, definitely try the Guava Duff for desert. There is also a Sbarro's if you get a craving for U.S. junk food. Inside the Marriott and Radisson are lots of expensive shops similar to what you'd find downtown, but the whole place is air-conditioned, much less crowded, and a lot closer to my hotels ;)

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday I went to Johnny Canoe's for dinner and/or drinks. Fridays was pizza at Sbarro's. As I think I mentioned in my last entry, I went to the Junkanoo in June festival early Saturday evening. The step-out (parade) was really nice, but *really* small. I think it's worth doing, but it just whets my appetite for coming back for the real thing in December. I got a daiquri at the famous Twin Brothers hut on Arawak Caye, but I didn't realize I needed to order it with alcohol. I'll know better next time. Speaking of Arawak Caye, I'm a little confused. The Junkanoo festival is supposedly on the Caye, but I never left the mainland. I think there *was* an island just behind the row of bars, but what little I saw didn't seem to be of any interest. Maybe I just don't understand the meaning of Caye--I thought it meant island.

By far, the best thing one can do in the Bahamas is go on a shark feeding dive. That's what I did Sunday. For the low low price of $130 (plus there's a $7 off coupon in one of the tourist papers), you can spend about half an hour kneeling on the sea floor 50 feet below the surface surrounded by about 30 reef sharks. When I say surrounded, I'm not exaggerating.

There are a few different points when you actually think about the risks involved. I did the dive with Nassau Scuba Center, and they have a pretty good system for settling your nerves. The first and second dive are in the same basic location, with the feeding happening on the second dive.

The first dive was another wall dive, but I was buddied with much more competent divers than last week. I was buddied with two guys who were already dive buddies; I think they were on vacation. Although dive buddies are legally responsible for each other's lives, I don't think I even asked them both for their names. We just established that one of them would be the leader and the other two of us would follow him. Everything else worked like clockwork (which sounds pretty redundant).

For the first dive, I had 39 minutes of bottom time and a max depth of 83 feet. At the end of the dive, there was a wreck to explore. I think we saw 3 or 4 sharks at the beginning of the first dive, but there were at least a half-dozen swimming lazily around the boat at the end of the dive. Back on the boat, as the two customers who had decided to pay the mega-bucks to actually feed the sharks (I'll refer to these guys as "the feeders" throughout the remainder of this tale) and the divemaster were being dressed in their chain-mail suits, I took some pictures of the sharks swimming around the back of the boat. When you see the pictures, remember that those sharks are swimming in the exact spot where we were about to jump into the water. There were about a dozen sharks just swimming around the back of the boat that I could see from the surface.

Having done a shark dive about a year earlier in West Palm Beach, I wasn't nervous about swimming with sharks. But the scariest point for me was about 2 minutes into the second dive. I was following the camerawoman from the dive charter with my two buddies off to the side, and I almost bumped right into a 5-7 foot reefie (shark). I think he was only about 2 feet in front of me when I noticed him (remember, masks cut off a lot of your peripheral vision). I shuddered for a second when I thought about him biting my head off if I had been swimming just a bit faster. I realized that was pretty irrational, but then so is intentionally swimming with 30 sharks. From that point forward, I was constantly scanning all around me.

We got to the feeding area and took our positions. The other 4 observers and myself were directed to kneel in a line as close together as possible. The camerawoman directed us to the right spot, and we seemed to get settled just in time. The feeders and divemaster weren't too far behind us and they were bringing a crowd of sharks.

The one thing that was stressed the most during the pre-dive briefing is that we observers had to keep our hands to ourselves. We were told that if any of us was seen trying to touch a shark, we would be immediately sent to the surface. I'm not sure how they'd handle that, but I didn't want to piss off the staff or loose out on my $130 adventure. I can always pet sharks at home in Ft. Lauderdale ;)

The two feeders just stood by a big basket that the divemaster brought with him. They were each given a long metal rod with a handle. The divemaster would then stick a dead fish from the basket on the end of a feeder's pole, and they would then hold it up for the sharks to eat. It wasn't a feeding frenzy, but it was fairly close. The most amazing part was when the divemaster would take a fish and swim over to about 6 feet in front of us observers. He would wave the fish around in front of him until the sharks were literally coiling themselves around him to get at it. It was either experience or very intelligent sharks that prevented him from being bitten. Of course, for all I know his hands did get some nips. I just didn't think to ask after the dive.

Once a shark took the fish, the divemaster would grab the snout of a shark (I'm not sure if it was the same one each time, or whether it was the shark that he had just given the fish to) and pull it to his chest. It looked like something between alligator wrestling and cradling a baby. He did this a number of times. I wasn't sure if the sharks were going into a torpor (hypnotic state) like I had seen in two National Geographic/Discovery channel specials. They definitely weren't attacking him. After holding the shark like that for a few seconds, it seemed like the divemaster let them go. I guess he didn't want to push his luck an further.

There was another moment of truth during the dive when a shark swam very close to me (I was on the end of the line of observers) and then turned behind me. I made a conscious decision to turn my back on the shark that I knew was only a few feet behind me. After this happened once or twice more, I could ignore the sharks as they went behind me *almost* without a second thought.

Lest you think I was the only lunatic in the water, I need to tell you what happened when the food was all gone. The divemaster took the rods from the feeders, stowed them in the basked, and then took the two feeders by the hand and brought them in front of the basket for a great big bow. After all the warnings about keeping our hands to ourselves, the dive master had the two feeders raise their arms and take a bow for the camera. Ironic, don't you think?

After the bow, the dive master retrieved the basked and headed back to the boat with the feeders. It was mentioned during the pre-dive briefing that us observers would then have a chance to search the bottom for shark teeth, but we didn't when it was "safe" to break formation. When the camerawoman put her camera down and started looking for teeth, we all kind of looked at each other and then joined it. At this point, there were six divers with their heads almost in the sand with at least a dozen sharks still swimming all around us. The sharks seemed to be keeping about 5 feet away from any one of us, but a diver accidentally bumping into a shark (or vice versa) wasn't out of the question. I seemed to be the only diver who was interested in looking at the sharks at this point.

I half-heartedly looked for teeth, but I must explain that the bottom was covered with what looked like broken bits of coral, rocks, and shells. While everyone else started their search directly in front of them, I swam the extra few feet to where the basket was during the feeding thinking that I had a better chance of finding teeth there. But after a minute or so of searching, I wasn't sure of where to look. Maybe a minute before the camerawoman signaled that it was time to head back to the boat, I somehow found a tooth. It was a very small tooth and the end was broken off, but I was happy to have a reminder of this most excellent dive.

There was a hang bar 15 feet below the boat for the divers to do our safety stop, and I hung on that bar until almost everyone else had gotten back on the boat. At this point, there were probably about 18 sharks still swimming around us, but they had backed off another few feet. Even though I was still only wearing my spandex dive skin, I spent 51 minutes down with a max depth of 51 feet.

I am definitely interested in trying the role of feeder on a future dive, but I don't have the equipment (full wetsuit, hood, and gloves) to do it this trip and I think I'd like to bring a witness with me. I came away from the experience with an even deeper awe and appreciation for sharks.

Watching the evening news the day of the dive, I heard about another shark attack off the West coast of Florida. The attack was on a small boy in the surf zone. I am convinced that I was less at risk of being attacked during my dives that that boy or any other child is when playing in heavy surf.

Assuming it isn't raining tomorrow (Thursday), I plan to check out the lounge-style night club in the Nassau Beach Hotel called the Living Room. Friday, I'll check out a beach themed party club called the Zoo, and I hope to go diving again Sunday. Next week, I'm told that I'll be at a hotel in downtown Nassau. I'll try to do some shopping, check out the pirate museum, and maybe the library (which used to be a jail). After next week, I'll be spending 3 weeks on Andros island where there is a lot less development. I hope to do a "blue hole" dive there. Blue holes are extremely deep holes in the ocean floor of a small diameter--may a few hundred feet. That's about all I know of them.