Internet 2 reinvents phone network

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From Technology Review

Internet2, a nonprofit advanced networking consortium in the United States, is designing a new network intended to open up large amounts of dedicated bandwidth as needed. For example, a researcher wanting to test telesurgery technologies–for which a smooth, reliable Internet connection is essential–might use the network to temporarily create a dedicated path for the experiment. Called the dynamic circuit network, its immediate applications are academic, but its underlying technologies could one day filter into the commercial Internet, and it could be used, for example, to carry high-definition video to consumers…

This might be interesting as an academic experiment, but it’s nonsense on stilts in the context of the commercial internet. You cam imagine Hollywood and the multimedia companies slavering at the prospect of ‘premium’ Internet service “with a direct connection from our studios to your home”.

Google hijacks Error 404

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Google has released a new version of its browser toolbar designed to hijack 404 error pages. It was spotted by a blog known as Seoker.com.

As Google put it, when you use its new toolbar, “You’ll get suggestions instead of error pages: If you mistype a URL or a page is down, now the Toolbar will give you that familiar ‘Did you mean’ with alternatives, like when you do a Google search.”

In other words, if you key in a web address and the server you’re visiting can’t find that address, the toolbar will, in many cases, ignore the 404 error page returned by the server, displaying one supplied by Google instead. This Googlicious error page will give you alternative urls, but it also includes a Googlicious logo and a Googlicious search box.

Plus, as Seoker.com points out, the search box is pre-packed with words from the url you keyed in. So Google has yet another means of tracking your behavior.

Of course, Google doesn’t see the irony here. With his own blog post, Google search guru Matt Cutts said that if toolbar users and webmasters don’t like this, they can do something about it.

The only problem is that webmasters generally won’t know anything about it because they won’t know it’s happening.

From The Register.

Untruth of the day

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“For years, ISPs have built a business on other people’s music. “

Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of the quaintly-named British Phonographic Industry, commenting on reports that the government proposes to legislate to force ISPs to monitor content flowing through their servers.

Brown & Co swallow copyright thugs’ line

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From Times Online…

People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.

Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material, The Times has learnt…

If you wanted a case study in the naivete of British politicians, then this is it. One expected nothing more of the Brown government (which still thinks that Microsoft is cutting edge), but the Cameroonians seem to have bought the RIAA line too. At any rate, here’s what the Times report says.

Ed Vaizey, the Shadow Arts Minister, said: “David Cameron called on the internet providers to address this issue last summer. The credibility of the Government’s latest threat is undermined by the fact that ministers have spent so many years dithering on whether to legislate.”

eBay overhauls its feedback system

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From Nicholas Carr’s Blog…

EBay has been struggling for some time with growing discontent among its members, and it has rolled out a series of new controls and regulations to try to stem the erosion of trust in its market. At the end of last month, it announced sweeping changes to its feedback system, setting up more “non-public” communication channels and, most dramatically, curtailing the ability of sellers to leave negative feedback on buyers. It turns out that feedback ratings were being used as weapons to deter buyers from leaving negative feedback about sellers…

This is an intriguing — and sobering — moment.

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BlackBerry rage

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From Technology Review…

Research in Motion Ltd. said customers in the United States and Canada ”experienced intermittent delays” for about three hours Monday beginning about 3:30 p.m. EST. RIM said no messages were lost, and voice and text messaging services were unaffected.

”It is too early to determine root cause at this time, but RIM does have a team addressing this issue in order to define the problem and prevent it in the future,” the company said in a statement.

The BlackBerry service, which lets users check e-mail and access other data, has become a lifeline for many business executives and is increasingly popular among consumers with smart phones like the BlackBerry Pearl.

Outages have been rare in the BlackBerry’s nine-year history, but when they do hit, subscribers who have become addicted to the gadgets are quick to unleash their fury.

”I’m mad — it’s enough already,” said a frustrated Stuart Gold, who said he gets 1,000 e-mails a day as director of field marketing for Web analytics company Omniture Inc.

Gold, who worked most of Monday on a laptop while traveling, plans to ask his company to buy him a backup smart phone from a rival like Palm Inc., which makes the Treo, in case BlackBerry service goes on the blink again.

”I don’t know what happened, I don’t care what happened. They need to save their excuses for someone who cares,” Gold said…

Solipsism

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Robert Scoble visited Switzerland and insisted on telling us about it thus:

What was really fun was having raclette cheese dinner with famous author Bruce Sterling. Of course I intruded on the dinner with my cell phone camera. It’s a 40 minute video, where Laurent and Pierre explain raclette. What’s really interesting is that we had people all over the world who were watching us live. At about 9:30 we sit down with Bruce Sterling, famous science fiction author.

It doesn’t get interesting until about 13 minutes when Bruce tells us the difference between a blogger and a novelist.

At 20 minutes in we discover that Yahoo has rejected Microsoft’s bid so you hear our initial opinions…

Wow! “Famous author Bruce Sterling”, eh? What really struck me was the confident way Scoble thinks that his admiring public would be willing to sit through 13 minutes of aimless chat to get to what he regards as a really interesting bit. Who does he think we are? And, more importantly, who does he think he is?

James Cridland wasn’t impressed, either.

What all this reminds me of is what the Nobel laureate, Herbert Simon, said to a journalist who asked him what newspapers he read. “None”, said Herb, before going on to explain that at his age time was precious and he wasn’t going to waste it on reading stuff to which people hadn’t devoted much time or thought.

Why does Microsoft want Yahoo?

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Ed Felten’s been thinking about the question. Here’s his analysis:

Last week Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo at a big premium over Yahoo’s current stock price; and Google complained vehemently that Microsoft’s purchase of Yahoo would reduce competition. There’s been tons of commentary about this. Here’s mine.

The first question to ask is why Microsoft made such a high offer for Yahoo. One possibility is that Microsoft thinks the market had drastically undervalued Yahoo, making it a good investment even at a big markup. This seems unlikely.

A more plausible theory is that Microsoft thinks Yahoo is a lot more valuable when combined with Microsoft than it would be on its own. Why might this be? There are two plausible theories.

The synergy theory says that combining Yahoo’s businesses with Microsoft’s businesses creates lots of extra value, that is that the whole is much more profitable than the parts would be separately.

The market structure theory says that Microsoft benefits from Yahoo’s presence in the market (as a counterweight to Google), that Microsoft worried that Yahoo’s market position was starting to slip, so Microsoft acted to prop up Yahoo by giving Yahoo credible access to capital and strong management. In this theory, Microsoft cares less (or not at all) about actually combining the businesses, and wants mostly to keep Google from capturing Yahoo’s market share.

My guess is that both theories have some merit — that Microsoft’s offer is both offensive (seeking synergies) and defensive (maintaining market structure).

What — no comments?

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I sometimes get emails from readers which begin, with a reproachful air, “Since you don’t allow comments on your blog I’m emailing…”. Which is fine by me. But a post on James Cridland’s blog made me stop and think: why no comments here?

Three main reasons. The first is time, shortage of. I’m busy enough as it is. If people took the trouble to comment, then I would feel obliged to reply properly to what they wrote. As a result, blogging would take up more time, and I would do less of it. That doesn’t mean, incidentally, that I don’t admire bloggers like Quentin or Ed Felten, who do allow comments and invariably respond fully and thoughtfully. I just wish I had their capacity for hard work.

Secondly, although it’s nice to have readers (and I have no idea how many there are, because I’ve never done any kind of tracking) and I’m glad that people find this stuff worth reading and linking to, fundamentally I keep a blog for myself. I started blogging in 1998, and for the first three years or so, my blog was private. It was a personal notebook in which I kept stuff that I thought was noteworthy or useful. Because it had a search engine, it meant I could always cheat my poor memory by retrieving stuff instantly. (This, incidentally, is what started Tim Berners-Lee on the path that led to the invention of the Web.) I knew that if I had blogged about something I would always be able to find it again. This philosophy survived the switch to public blogging which took place, I think, sometime after 9/11. It’s just now that my personal notebook is publicly available to anyone who wants it.

Thirdly, one reason I took to blogging was because of Dave Winer, someone I’ve always admired, and whose Userland software I used for years. Following a link from James Cridland, I alighted on Dave’s argument about why a commenting facility is not a sine qua non for a blog. Here’s the relevant passage:

Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.

We already had mail lists before we had blogs. The whole notion that blogs should evolve to become mail lists seems to waste the blogs. Comments are very much mail-list-like things. A few voices can drown out all others. The cool thing about blogs is that while they may be quiet, and it may be hard to find what you’re looking for, at least you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be expressed. And if you know history, the most important ideas often are the unpopular ones.

Me, I like diversity of opinion. I learn from the extremes. You think evolution is a liberal plot? Okay, I disagree, but I think you should have the right to say it, and further you should have a place to say it. You think global warming is a lie? Speak your mind brother. You thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea? Thank god you had a place you could say that. That’s what’s important about blogs, not that people can comment on your ideas. As long as they can start their own blog, there will be no shortage of places to comment. What there is always a shortage of, however, is courage to say the exceptional thing, to be an individual, to stand up for your beliefs, even if they aren’t popular.

The advent (and exponential growth) of comment spam confirms the wisdom of being chary of allowing comments. I’m responsible for a couple of other blogs which do allow them, and one of my daily chores is weeding out the fake comments by pornographers and other online hoodlums which have got past the filter. Life’s too short for this.