The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has published a set of solicited essays on the wisdom of using software that looks at the content of the data being sent over the Net, AKA deep packet inspection or DPI. The essays are from notables such as Susan Crawford , and Berkman’s Chris Soghoian and Max Weinstein. The essays overall condemn DPI as a general practice, on privacy and free speech grounds.

The page itself reads like something that comes not out of government but out of e-government.

[Later that day:] By the way, the Privacy Commissioner is the only federal government org in Canada with an outward facing blog. I can’t tell if that should be filed under Irony or Appropriate.[Tags: dpi canada e-gov egovernment net_neutrality ]

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James Fallows has an insightful analysis of a seemingly simple answer Obama gave to a question about American exceptionalism. And in it, you can see the workings of Fallows’ writerly mind.

[Tags: obama exceptionalism james_fallows ]

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So,now Iowa has decided that marriage is between two people who love each other. I’m shocked and delighted, and just a little disappointed that New England didn’t get to be the first multi-state Republic of Love.

I watch the kids in our local high school, gay and straight together, and I am floored that this change has occurred so quickly. When I was brought up, not only were we deeply homophobic, but we had an entire psychological theory to back us up: Men were afraid of homosexuals because of their own latent homosexuality; we all carried a little gay man inside of us. The prejudice, the fear, and the theory have all drained faster — unevenly distributed, of course — than I could ever have hoped.

Hope.

[Tags: gay_marriage ]

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Here’s a snippet from an interview with Kevin Werbach running at Knowledge@Wharton. Kevin was one of the chairs of Obama’s FCC transition team.

The FCC really needs to think about itself as an economic stimulus agency, as an agency that’s about creating jobs and fostering investment. Look at the telecommunications and media and technology sectors — there is a tremendous opportunity for growth. These are not industries that are going down. These are industries that, in many ways, are growing. And they’re the foundation for other kinds of new jobs

There’s a ton of policy stuff that needs to be done, but this is the kind of strategic thinking we need going forward. Here’s some more of Kevin. You know, I really wouldn’t be crying in my beer if Kevin were made an FCC Commissioner. In fact, you’d hear a whoop coming from my house that’d have you dialing the emergency number of the Happiness Police.

[Tags: kevin_werbach fcc net_neutrality telecommunications ]

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I like Google’s April Fools joke a lot, a singularity spoof. Be sure to visit the page Cadie built for herself based on her vastly intelligent analysis of the Web. (The little story the posts tell reminds me a little of something — The Turing Tests — I posted a few months ago, but which I had hesitated to post because I didn’t like it much.)

But then there’s SlideShare. I like what SlideShare does, and I like that they did an April Fools joke. But, frankly, I think they didn’t think it through. This morning I got an email from them:

Hi davidjoho,

We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right. ;-)

Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

It fooled me plenty. I even sent the support team the suggestion that they include a link to the slideshow that’s doing well since some of us have more than one posted there. I got a quick and friendly reply from a support person explaining that this was an April 1 joke. For the day, everyone’s “number of views” number has been boosted wildly.

Hmmm. For the joke to work, we have to be able to figure out it’s a joke. But for that, I’d have to have known how many views my slideshows had had, and even if I’d noticed the anomaly, I’d have to make the leap to it being a joke, rather than a meme taking off. Worse, if I didn’t realize that I was being fooled, the email entices me to twitter-brag to the world about a non-accomplishment, including a hashtag so I can be added to the list of the fooled. I don’t mind being the butt of an April Fools joke, but it shouldn’t take a letter to Support to figure it out, and it shouldn’t spur me to announce my vain foolishness to the world.

Now, the truth is that I like SlideShow a little better than I did on March 31 because it did an April Fools Day joke, even though I think the joke was kinda lame. I even kinda like the lameness. Next year I hope they come up with something better.

[Tags: april_fools ]

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The always insight/delight/ful Molly Wright Steenson describes 19th century pneumatic tube cylinder delivery systems. Quite astounding…and all in 5 minutes and 20 slides. From the O’Reilly Ignite series.

[Tags: tubes pneumatic_tubes packet_switch_networks networks molly_wright_steenson ]

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The FTC has decided that if you’re selling people stuff but not allowing them to do what they want with that stuff, you have to let them know, and not in print the size of an ant’s tush.

[Tags: drm ]

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Last night in New Orleans I had a delicious veggie meal at Bennochin (1212 Royal St), an African restaurant. The restaurant is humble, inexpensive, and friendly. It’s not a veggie restaurant, but they have lots of dishes that are, or can be made, animal free. It’s next door to Mona’s, which has some veggie, cheesy Italian dishes. Since New Orleans is not the veggie-friendliest of cities — they like their seafood here! — I thought I’d make a note of it…

[Tags: new_orleans vegetarian restaurants veggie ]

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