This is a very funny remix of The Shining. (Thanks to Joi for the link) [Tags: remix humor]

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I’m not sure if I’ve got this right, but this page did image searches for tens of thousands of English nouns. Those that got fewer than 50 hits at Yahoo! Search they ignored. For the others, they color-averaged the images and came up with a color for each of 33,096 nouns. Then they arranged them by meaning (although you can also arrange them by color) and put them on an interactive chart.

Oh, what the hell, go there and start clicking randomly. [Tags: taxonomy EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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MapMix ( in beta) lets you say where you are on a Google map and then shows you a map positioning others who have done the same. You can specify your gender, sexual orientation and relationship status so that you only see similarly categorized people. Click on one and you can do an IM/SMS thing called Quick Message (which wasn’t working for me when I tried it a few minutes ago).

It’s more dating oriented than I am. And the profile probably ought to include which languages you speak. But that’s what betas are for. [Tags: mapmix google]

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David Berlind has a massively detailed account of how Massachusetts decided to exclude Microsoft’s Office products from the list of apps acceptable for purchase by the state government. He’s got the back and forth, the in and out, the he-said/she-said of the whole deal, with careful considerations of the claims and counterclaims. It’s a must read if you care about open source and the future of Microsoft.

One important conclusion:

In fact, one important point that has so far gotten no attention in the coverage of the Massachusetts decision is that the door is actually still open for Microsoft’s format’s get back on the list. In a telephone interview, CIO Quinn made it clear that if Microsoft fixed its patent license to meet the state’s requirements, the state would reconsider the Office XML Reference Schema for inclusion in its standards. “We would support multiple formats as long as they’re open” said Quinn. “If Microsoft were to do that, I would expect that we would add it to the list.”

David thinks the exclusion of Microsoft is big big news that could have a cascading effect… [Tags: massachusetts microsoft OpenSource DavidBerlind]

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Del.icio.us‘s own Joshua Schachter is going to give a lunchtime talk at the Berkman Center on October 25, and that evening he’ll be my guest at a “Web of Ideas” open discussion. Both events are open to the public, although the lunchtime one requires an RSVP; check the Berkman page for details as they become available. [Tags: tagging JoshuaSchachter berkman]

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I stumbled across the Camp Katrina blog by National Guardperson SPC Van Treuren today. He’s been on Katrina relief duty. His blog is funny and gives a different insight into the world. What’s not to like? [Tags: CampKatrina blogs katrina]

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Anil Dash notices that judging from the Web 2.0 conference, half of the Web is missing.

Shelley, in the wonderfully titled post, “A sudden weight was felt in the room,” finds it “ironic…that it took a post by Anil Dash to push the issue of lack of diversity at O’Reilly conferences into the tech.memeorandum.com hot tech issues page.” [Tags: diversity gender web2 ShelleyPowers AnilDash]

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Bostonians are supporting a bid to hold Wikimania — AKA Wikipediapalooza — in Boston next year. That would be just too much fun! [Tags: wikipedia boston]

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All hail Ajax and Jesse James Garrett whose paper named it, laid it out, and kicked off the current excitement about it. As Jesse and Wikipedia acknowledge, as with most important ideas, it can be traced back to lots of beginnings.

The other day, one of those beginnings occurred to me. Jeez, I thought, this sounds like something Tim Bray was talking about about five years ago. He called it Taxi, and I thought I’d written it up in my newsletter, although now I can’t find it. But Tim did write about Taxi at xml.org in March of 2001. So, a tip of the hat to Tim… [Tags: ajax TimBray JesseJamesGarrett]

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Tim Wu is talking about broadband. He says [rough notes!]:

US broadband penetration, at 16% of inhabitants, is 12th-16th in the world. We are #1 or #2 in terms of total connections; China is the other.

There is a fundamental divide between “openists” and “deregulationists” who disagree about the point and nature of a telecommunications network.

Tje openists think of the network as an “innovation commons.” They’re interested in what the network makes possible. They believe the essence of a network is a public infrastructure: a means, not an ends. The network is like the electricity network: You care not about current but about the appliances it makes possible. 2) They believe in Net neutrality: The Net ought not make choices about what it’s used for. 3) And they believe in the end-to-end network, a Darwinian theory of innovation. E22 maximizes the number of people who are innovating. An E2E enables a fair fight.

The deregulationists think that if you just keep regulation out of the Net, it’ll flourish. 1) They believe in propertization. “When the word commons is used, tragedy is never far behind.” They don’t believe in lack of stewardship. Property owners, motivated by the improvement of their property, will improve the Net. That’s where innovation comes from. 2) We need to provide the proper incentives to stimulate and direct that innovation. 3) They are even more suspicious of government than are the openists.

Cisco in 2002 said that the greatest potential growth in the Net was in the transformation of the Internet from a stupid network into an intelligent one (“smart pipe”), enabling carriers to provide added-value services, e.g. video and voice. This makes deregulationists happy.

Tim Wu is talking about broadband. He says:

US broadband penetration, at 16% of inhabitants, is 12th-16th in the world. We are #1 or #2 in terms of total connections; China is the other.

There is a fundamental divide between “openists” and “deregulationists” who disagree about the point and nature of a telecommunications network.

Tje openists think of the network as an “innovation commons.” They’re interested in what the network makes possible. They believe the essence of a network is a public infrastructure: a means, not an ends. The network is like the electricity network: You care not about current but about the appliances it makes possible. 2) They believe in Net neutrality: The Net ought not make choices about what it’s used for. 3) And they believe in the end-to-end network, a Darwinian theory of innovation. E22 maximizes the number of people who are innovating. An E2E enables a fair fight.

The deregulationists think that if you just keep regulation out of the Net, it’ll flourish. 1) They believe in propertization. “When the word commons is used, tragedy is never far behind.” They don’t believe in lack of stewardship. Property owners, motivated by the improvement of their property, will improve the Net. That’s where innovation comes from. 2) We need to provide the proper incentives to stimulate and direct that innovation. 3) They are even more suspicious of government than are the openists.

Cisco in 2002 said that the greatest potential growth in the Net was in the transformation of the Internet from a stupid network into an intelligent one (“smart pipe”), enabling carriers to provide added-value services, e.g. video and voice. This makes deregulationists happy.

Both like Schumpeter. But they like different things he said in hi career. The openists like the idea of super hero entrepreneuers. Deregulationsists like the idea of great firms being innovative. The tension comes when the great firms try to kill the super hero entrepreneurs.

Telecom has three layers: app, transport and user. When a transport provider wants to integrate with an application provider, is that good or bad? The Chicago school suggests that generally that type of vertical integration is good: There are some services that can only work in the app and the transport work together. The openists split on this. Generally they don’t like vertical integration. E.g., doing it to kill competitors. E.g., if a cable company wants to offer VOIP, are they doing it to benefit their customers or to kill Vonage and Skype?

In the House of Reps there is now a telecom reform bill that includes “network neutrality” language. The inspiration for network neutrality comes from Carterfone’s desire to sell a little rubber cup on the receiver of your phone to screen the call from others. Bell claimed this affected voice quality and banned it. The courts said that users have the right to use their phone any way they want so long as they’re not illegal or harmful to the network. Applied to the Internet: Any user has a right to go anywhere you want. Hence, “it should be illegal, absent good reason, for a carrier to prevent you from getting what you want.” The deregulationists don’t like this much, although Michael Powell was an exception.

Tim ends with a case study of where the two camps face off: “What should happen when a company — maybe, let’s say, Apple — provides you with a television that allows you to download shows you want to watch,” bypassing your cable provider? Should the cable company be allowed to block that service? Or should it be constrained to carry Internet TV even if it destroys its cable TV business?

Q: I’m an openist, but I really just favor a diferent type of regulation.
A: The idea that the central planners ought to decide the future of telecommunications is out of favor in the US. In the 1960s, the FCC was sure the UHS was the future, and they blocked cable…

Q: (Jock Gill) The quarterly obligations of the private sector keep it from investing in this type of infrastructure. Also, what metrics? Are we citizens or consumers? That makes a big difference. There are more bits coming out of homes than going into them.
A: This is a split among the openists on this. Some only care about economic growth. Some want to consider other values.

Scott Bradner says that the FCC is worried that if the providers fail, there won’t be a network to be open about. They believe the Next Generation Network is critical for future innovation. The NGN is a “carrier-managed, content sensitive network.” (“conjtent-sensitive” = packets are typed so they can be handled differently.) (Scott disagrees.)

In response to a set of questions, Tim says that the NGN folks say that the Net neutrality folks are actually favoring text-based content because the Net is much better at delivering text than video or voice. The counter, Tim says, is that it’s a matter of bandwidth. Tim: “Sometimes death is in the national interest.”

Tim: “The future of telecom is in figuring out when discrimination is ok and when it’s not.” As examples of why we need Net neutrality, he points to AT&T’s attempt to prevent people from attaching wifi and its attempt to ban VPNs. He predicts that when a cable company faces a competing TV network over its line, it will step up the degree of opposition. [Tags: TimWu telecommunications berkman]

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