Boston Globe: FCC rules against Logan’s WiFi ban. And about time, too. For a few years Massport has trotted out every lame excuse in the book, including Homeland Security, to keep its tenants and vendors from dipping into its lucrative airport-wide WiFi service monopoly. While some frequent travelers, like me, have taken the plunge and gotten a monthly subscription to Boingo to remove the sting, there are probably still plenty of schmoes paying $8.95 for a “day pass” that will probably only be useful to you for a half hour.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link, who also point to perennial WiFi pundit Glenn Fleishman’s analysis. I will summarize his summary of the decision:

Restrictions prohibited by the ... rules include lease restrictions... Massport misreads ... misconstrues ... the safety exception is ... inapplicable... no arguments that Massport has made give us reason to change our earlier conclusions that the Commission has statutory authority in these circumstances.

Heh.

New York Times: William Styron, Novelist, Dies at 81. While others will remember him for Sophie’s Choice, Lie Down in Darkness, or The Confessions of Nat Turner, I will of necessity remember this writer from my hometown of Newport News for Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, which he wrote in 1990 about his struggles with depression and which proved (aside from a short story collection) to be his last published work.

When I read Darkness Visible in the early 90s, there were few writers who had addressed the sufferings of depression in a public, accessible, direct way—and virtually no successful ones. Styron’s writing gave me pause as I reflected on its parallels with my own experiences. In retrospect, it has given me hope that depression need not always marginalize the sufferer.

Other encomia to Styron via Technorati.