Alfred Kahn deregulated airlines and trucking in the US, and he’s not feeling the love for net neutrality regulations: Some 25 years ago, I thought it was logical to try to prevent cable television companies, as beneficiaries of exclusive territorial franchises, from discriminating against unaffiliated suppliers of programming in favor of their own by prohibiting [...]
Broadcasting and Cable has this statement from Microsoft about that company’s dropping out of the ironically named “It’s Our Net, Not Yours” regulatory coalition: “Microsoft has withdrawn its name from the It’s Our Net website for the pendency of the AT&T-Bellsouth merger proceeding based on a company decision not to engage the proceeding,” the company [...]
Doc Searls is writing a follow-up on last year’s Saving the Net piece and he wants your suggestions: So I just decided I’ll run a first aniversary follow-up on the piece, over at Linux Journal. But first I’d like to hear from the rest of ya’ll. Tag your posts savingthenet and I’ll find them. Mine [...]
Crazy Richard Stallman’s temper tantrum over GPLv3 threatens to split Linux into two warring camps. Forbes.com has the skinny: Despite that utopian anticapitalist bent, Linux and the “open-source” software movement have lured billions of dollars of investment from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and other tech vendors, plus corporate customers such as Wall Street banks, Google [...]
I wish I’d said what Nicholas Carr said about Web 2.0: Web 2.0′s economic system has turned out to be, in effect if not intent, a system of exploitation rather than a system of emancipation. By putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership [...]
The Guardian reports that Google has set up a PAC and a high-dollar lobbying arm to protect its network subsidies: While Google would not be hit directly by a two-tier net, its recently acquired online video site YouTube would, and Google fears that splitting the internet could hamper the creation of other innovative businesses. “Net [...]
The Boy Scouts are on the outs with all right-thinking and decent people for their intolerance of gay scoutmasters, although all the shrieking over Mark Foley would almost make you think they were just unfashionably ahead of the curve. In case anybody’s wobbling, there is something to set you straight. The Boy Scouts are oppressing [...]
George Lakoff, the Chomsky protege wannabe* who’s a big fave with Democrats these days, has a new book out urging leftish politicians to spin more. Steven Pinker is not impressed: There is no shortage of things to criticize in the current administration. Corrupt, mendacious, incompetent, autocratic, reckless, hostile to science, and pathologically shortsighted, the Bush [...]
Bill Moyers is the ordained Baptist minister who was LBJ’s Chief Propagandist during America’s descent into the Viet Nam quagmire. He made a name for himself by pushing Joseph Campbell’s loopy theories about the alleged universality of mythology on PBS and giving a megaphone to voices on the lunatic fringe of American politics such as [...]
The party’s over*. The Rustbelt Puddy Tats keep on playing the same way they played all year, and Oakland, like the Yankers before them, are so severely affected by post-season hype they’ve forgotten how to do the things that Little-Leaguers do every day. Baseball is a simple game: you throw the ball, you hit the [...]
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