"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Outlandish Josh

Published on Tue, 2006-05-02 15:25

NYT On Net Neutrality

The Grey Lady Gets it Right:

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.

Another issue aside from the "extortion problem" is that the Telcos want to sell their own rich-media services, and using the massively developed and adopted infrastructure known as "internet" makes that really easy. Except it only works (at a profit) if they're allowed to make their service some kind of special gated community, which means breaking network neutrality.

The new telco conglomorates and cable services see a future where you're "data services" include HDTV on-demand, traditional "internet", and e-commerce all through some AOL or Prodigy-like vertical silo. Which would be suxxomatic.

Action items here.

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nerding out
Published on Tue, 2006-05-02 15:25

NYT On Net Neutrality

The Grey Lady Gets it Right:

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.

Another issue aside from the "extortion problem" is that the Telcos want to sell their own rich-media services, and using the massively developed and adopted infrastructure known as "internet" makes that really easy. Except it only works (at a profit) if they're allowed to make their service some kind of special gated community, which means breaking network neutrality.

The new telco conglomorates and cable services see a future where you're "data services" include HDTV on-demand, traditional "internet", and e-commerce all through some AOL or Prodigy-like vertical silo. Which would be suxxomatic.

Action items here.

Read More

Tags: 
nerding out
Published on Tue, 2006-05-02 13:50

More Marriage

The Girth TXTs in from Minneapolis, MN: Elissa Fountain is married.

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General
Published on Mon, 2006-05-01 14:59

Drupal 4.7.0!

Drupal 4.7 is released. Quoth Dries:

2005 has been explosive for the Drupal community. Drupal.org usage has almost tripled in terms of page views, downloads, and number of users, and with the release of Drupal 4.7.0 we are seeing this new found energy drive the platform development forward at an amazing pace. There have been over 338 contributors to this latest release with over 1500 patches which is almost triple our previous record with Drupal 4.6 of 523 commits by 50 developers. These new contributions are seen in the major usability improvements, new Drupal core functionality, and expansion of the Drupal development framework that will afford themers and contributing developers even greater flexibility and power.

I've been playing with the beta code (and deploying it for clients) for several months, but anyone still languishing in 4.6-land should wake up and smell the AJAX. 4.7 has some great new tools for coders too, like the Form API, which is a mind-expander, but ultimately a huge improvement.

The most exciting thing though is watching the project and the community take off. No forks (except, of course Drupus). No serious infighting. People turning pro without selling out... The hits just keep coming.

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nerding out

Authentic Experience

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Nerding Out

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