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Domain: edventure.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to edventure.com.
Comments · 5
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Blinkered nationalism with a hint of unknowing.To quote Mr. Katz:
It seems clear that no one in the federal government from Congress to the regulatory agencies to the White House -- is in a strong position to oversee or regulate the Net or the increasingly disparate tech nation.
Forgive my ignorance, but surely the whole point of the Internet was to not be regulated by any government agency or appointee? The 'tech nation' may need regulation in a corporate sense, but that's what current company laws are meant to be there for - stopping companies from engaging in practices that are designed only to destroy competition, or otherwise harm others.
Current attempts at regulating the Internet have proven that the memes we have are flawed in this medium. My first example would be ICANN. Created with great fanfare, and initially headed by one of the Large Brains Of The Internet (and now, an even Larger Brain), today we find that the group is almost universally villified as having no power and no point. This certainly isn't the media's fault, though they may have written about what they had seen from the public at large.
The worst example (or best, depending on your point of view) of an attempt at keeping old-school practices in the new medium is, of course, WIPO. They have what is meant to be a universal arbitration system for the ownership of domain names, and yet this is open to local interpretation; different groups under the same agency acting under the same rules will give differing opinions. Worst of all, if you don't like the outcome of their arbitration, it doesn't matter, because in many jurisdictions (such as the US) they have no enforcement power, so you can go to court instead! Again, they serve no real purpose.
We live in a highly fragmented age. There are many new forces and ways of thinking being created, and yet those which already exist are attempting to stifle them. Add this to the normal bickering that is international politics, and we end up with what is technically termed "a big mess." In many ways, the Internet is before it's time. -
another link
There is very interesting (as usual) piece from Esther Dyson on Microsoft breakup
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Guilty as ChargedAs one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, I first would like to thank hemos and Jason Bennet for their reviews, which I thought were quite good. but then, I would. also, for not charging me too much for saying such nice things (did you get the bag of unmarked bills I sent along per your request?)
This seems a perfect place to plead guilty to all the charges that have been leveled here. speaking strictly for myself and not my co-authors, I take this opportunity (and what a relief it is to finally come clean!) to admit to being everything everyone has said. It's all true. I'm boring. I'm a communist. I'm a drug-addled hippy. I pander to suits. I'm naive. I desperately want to control your thinking. More than that, I'm a secret agent for the NSA. I have a side deal going with Microsoft to destroy the Internet. I once kicked Little Elian Gonzalez's adorable furry puppy.
As a card-carrying anarchist, I love the mayhem and disinfotainment going on here with respect to the book. Gluetrain is excellent, yes. Pouring hot grits down your pants: highly recommended. But my favorite has been "I'm fed up with being told what to think (Score:4, Insightful)" -- which begins: "Whilst I'm sure this is an interesting book..." I translate this as meaning: "Although I haven't actually read the book, that's not going to stop me from telling you what to think about it." (btw, "whilst" -- nice touch!) That this spew about "communist ideals" and (far worse) "paradigm shifts" would be considered insightful begs the question of what passes for insight these latter days. but everyone's entitled to an opinion, right? here's mine: learn to read, bunky.
forgive me for saying this, but the detractors here have been so pedestrian! surely this group is bright enough to do better. for a real slash-and-burn job on the manifesto, see my own review: Clues You Can Lose.
anyway, great fun to read this stuff. allow me to leave you with one quote from the book, which
thank you,
Dale Carnegie
EGR
Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices -
robots.txt
There is and informal but generally accepted standard you should take a look at called "A Standard for Robot Exclusion"
Take a look at http://info.webcrawler.c om/mak/projects/robots/robots.html and http://info.webcrawler
This does not address copyright issues, which have become even murkier with the recent revisions to the copyright law restricting fair use.
You should also take a look at the XML syndication format (aka RSS [RDF Site Summary]). It's based on RDF and is becoming supported by alot of larger news sites, even
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Re:Other avenues, too...
Every publisher I've been talking with lately says they'd be willing to use an OSD-compliant license on their book as long as the license applies on the day that printed copies get to stores and not before. That sounds fair to me. It gives the publisher lead-time over the other publishers who did not pay for the work, and we get free documentation.
Really? In The Open-Source Revolution Tim O'Reilly says that they tried it and it didn't work. Do you happen to know what the difference was? Was it the delayed release of the "source code"?