Electronista and Gizmodo are reporting on AT&T's Operation Fine Edge, where they are increasing EDGE coverage and speeds on their network and lowering latency, in preparation for the rollout of the iPhone by the end of the month. Gizmodo reports it's not the protocol, but the bandwidth of the towers that is the issue. According to an internal AT&T document, they're dropping in more T-1s in their poorest performing towers, hoping to increase the minimum from 40kbps to 80kpbs. (EDGE's real world max is about 200kbps.)
The RIAA's challenges to Judge Lee R. West's order (pdf) awarding the defendant attorneys fees in Capitol v. Foster and to the "reasonableness" of Ms. Foster's attorneys' fees have not only forced the RIAA to disclose its own attorneys fees, and caused the judge to issue a second decision labeling them as "disingenuous", their motives "questionable", and their factual statements "not true", but have now caused the amount of the fees to more than double, from $55,000 to $114,000, as evidenced by Ms. Foster's supplemental fee application (pdf's).
The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting that the trial of the three election workers accused of rigging the 2004 presidential election recount in Cuyahoga County is finally underway. As you may recall, this was the case where poll workers "randomly" selected the precincts to recount by first eliminating from consideration precincts where the number of ballots handed out on Election Day failed to match the number of ballots cast and, then opening the ballot boxes in private and pre-counting until they found cases which would match up.
What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really wrong, presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin