John Mello has an article in TechNewsWorld on the Snowe-Dorgan Net neutrality bill. I only had one Aaarrrggghhh moment reading it, which is unusual for Net neutrality articles: When the spokesperson for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association said he’s against Net neutrality because “We continue to believe that regulation of the Internet is unnecessary and will only stifle the investment, innovation and creativity that has been the hallmark of today’s dynamic broadband marketplace.”

Net neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It’s about regulating the carriers. We shouldn’t let the anti-Net neutrality folks get away with this particular semantic fiddle.

[Tags: net_neutrality digital_rights]

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WikiLeaks is a Wikipedia-style wiki for people to place leaked documents, untraceably. According to the FAQ, “It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.” “Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.”

It’s ambitious. The FAQ says:

Wikileaks may become the most powerful “intelligence agency” on earth — an intelligence agency of the people. It will be an open source, democratic intelligence agency. But it will be far more principled, and far less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency; consequently, it will be more accurate, and more relevant. It will have no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interests will be truth and freedom of information. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, Wikileaks will rely upon the power of overt fact to inform citizens about the truths of their world.

It’s got a million leaked docs already and expects to surpass Wikipedia in number of entries. But it’s hard to see how it becomes anything like an intelligence agency if it only consists of leaks; if a citizen wants information about a topic, seeing only the leaked material is going to give quite a skewed and incomplete view. On the other hand, if you’re researching a topic, I can see the value of checking in with Wikileaks to see if there’s anything you’re not supposed to know about it.

Here’s another bit from the FAQ:

Couldn’t leaking involve invasions of privacy? Couldn’t mass leaking of documents be irresponsible? Aren’t some leaks deliberately false and misleading?

Providing a forum for freely posting information involves the potential for abuse, but measures can be taken to minimize any potential harm. The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this works out in the edge cases. Does posting the names of covert agents count as a leak? [Tags: wikileaks wikis wikipedia intelligence politics media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Kevin Gamble asks a really interesting question: Can anyone come up with an example of a taxonomy that has scaled sufficiently to keep up with the insane in-rush of information we now take for granted? [Tags: kevin_gamble taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous folksonomy ]

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Dean Barnett at the Hugh Hewitt site weighs in with information that actually explains why the surge is not necessarily a pointless and desperate incremental increase in the number of troops. He says there are only 13,000 troops in Baghdad now, so sending most of the 21,500 new troops there would be a huge increase that could make a difference. Plus, we’ve changed the rules of engagement so now we’ll blow up entire blocks to get a single sniper. (Dean doesn’t quite put it that way.)

I appreciate Dan’s explanation, but I’m still skeptical that this will help us get to the vision we’d all like—a stable, democratic Iraq. Why? Fallujah.

By the way, Dean says the Bush administration hasn’t made the Baghdad focus clear because it would require admitting that it’s been a 3-year mistake to have kept troop levels in that city so low. Wouldn’t it have been better politically for Bush to say that we’re doubling the troop strength in Baghdad than to say we’re throwing a mere 12% increase of soldiers into the Iraqi fray? [Tags: iraq surge hugh_hewitt dean_barnett bush politics]

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Global Voices begins a post this way:

We didn’t want to have to write this article. As Global Voices‘ Latin America editor/Spanish translator/Digest dude David Sasaki wrote on one of our mailing lists yesterday, “I have low tolerance for the amount of internet bandwidth dedicated to the latest and greatest Apple product. . . .” Searching his Latin America RSS feeds, however, David could find “little else other than excited talk about the Apple iPhone,” and several of our other authors and editors reported on similar oohing and aahing coming from their respective blogospheres.

And why wouldn’t GV want to cover this? Only because there are some other issues that also matter, including “Freedom of the press and Saddam Hussein in the Moroccan blogosphere,” freedom of press under attack in the Philippines, freedom to blog under attack in Iran, the St. Petersburg flood, , the holidays and politics in Bangladesh, how Somalia is roiling Kenya, the life of a ten year old girl in Cambodia who peddles bracelets to tourists …

All that and more in 24 hours on the site. Global Voices continues to astound. [Tags: globalVoices gv iphone morocco philippines russia iran bangladesh somalia kenya cambodia media ]

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Sen. Byron Dorgan in a 2 min video explains why he’s co-sponsoring a bi-partisan Net neutrality bill. (Via SaveTheInternet.com) [Tags: net_neutrality byron_dorgan ]

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When I posted yesterday about my problem with Thunderbird and its possible solution, I did so in part because I wanted to make it findable by others with the same problem. So, I did the most basic search-engine optimization stuff of making sure I used some words and tags people are likely to search for. Then, yesterday afternoon I was part of a brief conversation with Andy Oram in which he talked about his interest in the phenomenon of bottom-up tech support. Googling for solutions to problems works but only sort of, says Andy. And that got me thinking that it’d be useful if we started tagging such posts with some standard tags, such as (perhaps): troubleshooting, operating system, application name, error message, problem area, solved/unsolved. So, my post on Thunderbird would be tagged: troubleshooting, xp, thunderbird, “rebuilding index”, folders, solved. Something like that.

In fact, perhaps we could use a microformat for technical problems and solutions. [Tags: microformats troubleshooting andy_oram everything_is_miscellaneous]

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I’ve owned the www.JohoTheBlog.com domain for years, and for years I’ve had a redirect that sends you to www.hyperorg.com/blogger/index.html. Now, my friendly and helpful host has made an alias so www.JohoTheBlog.com goes directly to the right page, with no redirect hiccup. Go ahead, give it a try: www.JohoTheBlog.com. See, you’re back where you started. What will they think of next?

If you already have a link here, first: Thanks! And there’s no need to change a thing. In fact, you’re pointing at the honest-to-TBL, unaliased address. But, from now I’ll be telling people the link to my blog is www.JohoTheBlog.com.

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Glenn Fleishman well covers the iPhone announcement. Yes, he got to fondle one, and he loves the interface. In a follow-up, he notes that it’s a closed system and wonders what that means for running skype-like VOIP on the device.

I can’t say that I’m filled with technolust for an iPhone. On the other hand, I don’t find my drool response stimulated by the iPod’s imperial pearly whites…despite Steven Levy‘s perfect book. [Tags: iphone ipod glenn_fleishman steven_levy apple voip skype]

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Ted Kennedy, the lion of the Senate, has posted a petition in support of his bill that would prevent any further escalation until the President presents a plan for success and Congress approves.

Maybe the bill is a symbolic action. Symbols count. [Tags: politics iraq bush ted_kennedy]

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