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- 8 hours and 26 minutes ago

Pretty much every tech source out there is reporting that the merger between Sprint’s XOHM WiMax service and Clearwire has been finalized with $3.2 Billion in funding coming from Google, Comcast, Intel, Time Warner and Bright House Networks. What a coincidence… Comcast has failed me miserably in the past week and today I purchased a XOHM Wireless USB connection.
This past Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I woke up early to write a couple articles for phandroid. A sigh of WTF billowed out as I could not connect to the internet. Repair network - nothing. Restart computer? nothing. Reset my modem, router and computer? Nada. Zilch. Zero.
So I call customer service and after 1 hour on the line? Nothing. Well that’s not completely true… they scheduled a technician to come out today (Monday) 5 days later. Luckily I have a few alternative places I can “stay” and access the Internet… so a trip it was!
I came back this morning to find that:

My roomate rescheduled the appointment for Sunday
They never came
My roomate called and they rescheduled for Tuesday
So that left me here, on Monday, without access to Internet. Sure, I could have packed my bags and headed to a little cafe with WiFi. Or I could even make an hour or so drive to one of the several friends/family who would take me in for the day/night so I could leech their interwebs. But I have a bunch of packages on the way and need to be home for the next several days to ensure they arrive.
But beyond that, I was sick of the uncertainty. This could happen at any given time - Comcast could just POOF go out - and I could be left without a convenient internet connection for days on end. And no, there aren’t any other WiFi signals I can pick up from my house that aren’t painfully slow.
I took a quick drive to BestBuy and grabbed a XOHM USB hub for $60, came home, installed the software, paid for 24 hours service for $5 and within 10 minutes I had a blazing fast connection to the internet. A blazing fast connection that for all intents ans purposes, can’t go down.

I know I’m opening up the door to* all sorts of agruments in the comments, but I’m simplifying the facts. The point is, even if XOHM service WERE to go down it would get back up and running MUCH faster. Because they are more than likely fixing a tower rather than having to set up an individual schedule to fix my personal problem.
Comcast is scheduled to come tomorrow between 7am and 10am at which point they’ll either fix the problem or diagnose the problem and schedule another ridiculous time several days into the future that they plan on fixing it. If the latter happens, I’ll probably tell them to take a hike and just start using XOHM full-time.

XOHM packages are both unique and awesome, if you ask me. You can get 24 hour web access for $5 or a month of web access for $30. The best part? No contracts! Just pay by the month! I’m lucky to be in Baltimore where XOHM made its debut and I’m happy it did. XOHM was a lifesaver for me today and it will probably save me again tomorrow when Comcast shows their incompetence yet again. In fact, many people I know locally are switching their Internet/TV service to Verizon.
And this is where the story comes full circle. Tomorrow, I might be leaving Comcast to use XOHM full time. But XOHM was part of Sprint and the service will be renamed Clear under the new company, Clearwire. The same Clearwire that was just approved for $3.2 Billion in financing… $1 Billion of which comes from Comcast.

So is this a case of “The Grass Is Always Greener Between The Two Fences Which is Partially Owned By Numerous Neighbors?” You betchya… and that is the main problem that Clearwire will have if you ask me. There are many stakeholders in Clearwire that have priorities and interests pulling in different directions. If execs in these companies sit on the Clearwire board or hold prominent positions in the company, there will be a tremendous conflict of interest that could create huge problems.
Myself, I’m sure along with many reading this article now, would love to see XOHM/WiMax/Clear used to conjunction with mobile devices, like an Android Phone, to support tremendous growth in mobile web speed and capabilities. Officials at Comcast and Time Warner likely have other ideas in mind. You can spin it however you want but the fact is that resources are never unlimited and at some point, decisions on how and where to use those resources must be made.
If one were looking at this in the most optimistic of manners than the investment is an insurance policy purchased by the investors. They’ll have a stake in a possible industry juggernaut moving forward and regardless of how their own company performs, Clearwire will provide some balance and diversity depending on which direction the tech sector heads next… its often hard to tell.
But lets not be naive. Do you think for a second that these huge companies with enormous power not only within their industry but within the world are just going to plop down hunderds of millions of dollars, pat Clearwire on the back and say, “go out and play?”
Not a chance. They’re going to keep an eye on their investment and make sure the company is being managed properly. And what Comcast or Time Warner views as “properly” could differ greatly from what Google views as “properly”.
That’s one way to look at it. The pessimistic way to look at it. But you could also look at Clearwire as more of a “meeting of the minds” where the best ideas and actions will be discussed by these various stakeholders and the CEO of Clearwire will attempt to do what is best for the company and its investors moving forward. Sound familiar?
It reminded me a lot of what Barack Obama said today as he announced more members of his cabinet including Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State:“I assembled this team because I am a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions,” he said.
“I think that’s how the best decisions are made. One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group-think and everybody agrees with everything and there’s no discussion and there are no dissenting views. So I am going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House.”
And if this Obamian perspective is to be believed, then Clearwire CEO Benjamin C. Wolff had better be prepared to be a strong, visionary leader.
So as I sit here writing this article with my little XOHM USB plugged in, I am quite literally wondering if I am looking at my solution for today’s problem or if another industry powerhouse is being created before our eyes. Unfortunately, the answer is anything but Clear.
[Via Clearwire PR]

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literally,mondays,customer service,mobile devices,grass

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Fire it up! Turbulence Commissions New Firefox Extension quot;Tumbarumbaquot; and F.A.T. Introduce Firefox Extension Blog quot;Artzilla.orgquot;

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- 14 hours and 7 minutes ago

centera href="http://turbulence.org/works/tumbarumba/"img id="image1662" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2142/tumbarumba.jpg" alt="tumbarumba.jpg" //a/centerbr / pToday, a href="http://turbulence.org/"Turbulence/a announced a new commission by a href="http://www.ethanham.com/"Ethan Ham/a and a href="http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/"Benjamin Rosenbaum/a. Titled ia href="http://turbulence.org/works/tumbarumba/"Tumbarumba/a/i, this Firefox extension allows the user to uncover twelve stories while surfing the web. Like a series of hidden doors, the user must discern the entry into a text via its apparent absurdity. By clicking through this outlier text, the story appears bit by bit. The project carries over elements from hypertext fiction, but through its implementation as a Firefox application, it becomes more firmly embedded in the user's overall browsing experience./p centera href="http://artzilla.org/"img id="image1663" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2142/artzilla_flyer_frontsmall.jpg" alt="artzilla_flyer_frontsmall.jpg" //a/centerbr / pFirefox extension projects have picked up more recently, one of my favorites continues to be Steve Lambert's ia href="http://add-art.org/"Add Art/a/i. (Incidentally, also a a href="http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/2008/"Rhizome Commission/a.) For the Firefox-extension aficionado, a href="http://fffff.at/"F.A.T./a will launch "a href="http://artzilla.org/"Artzilla.org/a" next week, a collection/blog dedicated to experimental Firefox add-ons. They're kicking the blog off on December 13th with an a href="http://agenda.wormweb.nl/agenda.php?id=2253"exhibition/a by Aram Bartholl, Dragan Espenschied, Evan Roth, Theo Watson, Jamie Wilkinson, Timo Klok, and Tobias Leingruber at Worm Rotterdam. Once running, a href="http://artzilla.org/"Artzilla.org/a will definitely be worth checking out./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-fp/~4/471558308" height="1" width="1"/

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fp,collections,blog,one of my favorites,wilkinson

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A. Berman, L'Âge de la traduction. "La tâche du traducteur" de Walter Benjamin, un commentaire.

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- 1 days and 15 hours ago

Antoine Berman, L'Ã‚ge de la traduction. "La tâche du traducteur" de Walter Benjamin, un commentaire. Textes rassemblés par Isabelle Berman avec la collaboration de Valentina Sommella. Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, coll. Intempestives, décembre 2008. Sortie en librairie le 11 décembre 2008 Prix: 20 â‚¬, 188 pages. ISBN: 978-2-84292-222-1 EAN: 9782842922221 Présentation - Extraits "Le commentaire « donne à penser », comme dit Heidegger. Et donnant à penser, il nous permet de nous éloigner de lui pour penser tous seuls. Loin d'être une « explication de texte » servile et paraphrasante, le commentaire est la meilleure manière, non seulement de penser un texte, mais de penser à partir de lui. Éventuellement contre lui. (p. 66) Comme nous, Benjamin percevait que la « demeure » du langage était menacée, et plus radicalement à notre époque qu'à aucune autre ; comme nous, il voyait dans la traduction l'une des formes de préservation de sa « demeure ». (p. 24) Assurément, historiquement, les langues se contaminent, se mélangent, entrent en contact. [...] Arrachant l'oeuvre et sa langue à la sphère de la communication, la traduction libère la pure essence de la langue, qu'est la lettre. (p. 178)" L'auteur Antoine Berman dispensa pendant plusieurs années au Collège International de Philosophie un enseignement sur les problèmes de la traduction. Le séminaire que nous publions ici est un commentaire de l'article de Walter Benjamin « La Tâche du traducteur », un travail sur la lettre, proche lui-même de l'acte de traduire. Il souligne la puissance théorique de ce texte, en analyse le détail et montre les conséquences de cette pensée pour toute pratique de la traduction. L'oeuvre d'Antoine Berman est aujourd'hui l'une des références majeures pour tous ceux â€“ philosophes, linguistes, littéraires â€“ que préoccupe le rapport entre les langues. [...]

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