DISQUS

The "hub motor" concept is not a new one. Ferdinand Porsche designed such a system in 1902. That said, this car looks like one well worth keeping an eye on.

Minimizing noise is likely the same from one blog to another -- in every case it's about sticking to a defined topic without intra-post digressions and "fluff" posting intermixed with more topical posts. The strength of a "high signal" blog is probably most related to its focus on a well-defined (even narrow) but "meaty" topic.

As an in-house attorney who deals extensively with copyright, one blog which immediately comes to mind as "high-signal-low-noise" is "The Patry Copyright Blog" (http://williampatry.blogspot.com/). This blog is written by William Patry, a senior copyright counsel for Google, and is a model for focus on and insight into a sometimes-difficult topic without extraneous filler.

This points out a particular problem in defining "minimalist" blogs, however -- that assessment (at least the way I put it above) is largely subjective. Rather than defining "minimalist" blogs by looking at signal-to-noise, it might be better to consider what such blogs really are -- authoritative within their respective fields -- and note that such authoritative blogs, amongst many characteristics, generally have a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Again sticking to what I know better, legal blogs, I'd point out the "Sentencing Law and Policy" blog (http://sentencing.typepad.com/) as an example of the "authoritative" minimalist blog; this blog is not only authoritative in its coverage of its chosen topic, but its analysis of pending issues -- its signal -- is so strong that it's frequently cited in cases and legal journals. What's more high signal, after all, than influencing the direction of the field you report upon?

The link to the paper has been moved to http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmat...

That may be the government's new position, but I think the FCC's is a reassessment of their traditional boundaries -- protection of the public trust in a scarce resource. The government's authority to regulate non-obscene communications must be grounded in something (here, dispensing access to and regulating a scarce public resource) to escape the Constitutional strictures of First Amendment doctrine. In other words, neither Congress' legislative grant to an administrative agency like the FCC or the FCC's exercise of its administrative rule-making authority can convey or assume restrictive power over speech contrary to that allowed by Constitution. I think garym's concern is a valid one, as it reflects the current political climate, but largely-settled judicial doctrines concerning speech protections would seem to be on the side of freedom, not restriction, if applied as-is.

Not only would this position "affect the basis for regulating 'indecency' on broadcast television and radio" but it would utterly devastate the already shaky reasoning behind Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' recent proposal to extend such regulations to cable and satellite programming. Whatever "scarcity" arguably exists in the broadcast spectrum certainly does not exist in the practically limitless cable and satellite realms. The opt-in nature of these newer channels should serve to defeat Stevens' and others' proposed regulation, but a change in the scarcity doctrine will ensure that defeat.