Marsha and I have thought occasionally about taking a cruise, and when some guy called with a Good Deal, we were kind of interested. However when I heard we'd have to go somewhere and listen to a spiel, I said no dice. Marsha called and left word that we wouldn't make it, after which "Jack Cooper" from the company, supposedly called "Great Escapes," started calling and insisting on rescheduling. I finally told him we weren't going to do it, and hung up. He called back and said we'd got disconnected, and I said no, I hung up. That was yesterday. Today he called again trying to reschedule, and again I said no and hung up. He called back and told me that I had an obligation to reschedule, and when I refused again, he said he was going to sue me. I hung up again, of course, and when he called back, I didn't answer... so he left a message. Mp3 of the message. Sounds pretty aggressive, eh? And do you think his name's really Jack Cooper? Glad we skipped that cruise... guess I'll sit back and wait for the subpoena.

Thursday night, EFF-Austin had a discussion of net neutrality with Internet expert John Quarterman, entrepreneur Michael Hathaway, AT&T VP Hank Hultquist, and author Austin Bay. It was a great conversation, available as a 98mb mp3... long but worth listening. A few points from the talk:

We're concerned about arbitrary bandwidth limits.

We need both a public and a private Internet. The public Internet brings us ubiquitous connectivity; the private Internet brings reliable service. We already have the private Internet (e.g. Akamai), and it doesn't make sense to legislate against it, if that's how net neutrality would be defined. The private Internet is compensated, managed, and provides some assurance of Quality of Service.
Packet network is where all forms of content distribution are moving. It's the most effective way to to deliver on demand voice, text, images, sound, video.

Hultquist: The Internet is really a set of agreements that includes both best effort treatment and, in some cases, will require better than best effort. There's a certain about of fear and uncertainty because no one knows what the network will look like in the future. However Hank believes that potential consumer-harming behavior is quite unlikely.

More video requires more capacity. So far behavior on the Internet has been very bursty, with 50kbps average use. Video means more sustained delivery at high bandwidth.
Broadcasting is not the future. AT&T is moving to packet video.
Hank feels that all the legislative proposals he's seen are "like Jell-O," and that they represent a form of Ludditism.

John Quarterman says that the FCC did away with net neutrality last year by deciding cable was no longer a telecommunications service, was instead an information service. The FCC also decided that broadband is an information service, not telecom. At the same time the FCC publsihed "four principles of net neutrality."

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network;
4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The use of the term "consumer" in each of the four principles suggests a broadcast orientation... in the broadcast world you have passive consumption of content, and not the kind of active participation in creating content and value that we see on today's Internet. And there are many other questions one could ask about these four principles. For instance, in #1, what law is used to define lawful content? The Internet is global, covering many jurisdictions. In #2, what are the needs of law enforcement? In #3, who decides what devices are "legal" and whether they harm the network? In #4, where does the competition come from? Can a duopoly (where only phone companies and cable companies provide service) be considered "competitive"?

Via Tricycle's Daily Dharma, I got whacked across the mind by the Dalai Lama this morning... [Link]

In general, instead of realizing that what we experience arises from a complicated network of causes, we tend to attribute happiness or sadness, for example, to single, individual sources. But if this were so, as soon as we came into contact with what we consider to be good, we would automatically be happy, and conversely, in the case of bad things, invariably sad. The causes of joy and sorrow would be easy to identify and target. It would all be very simple, and there would be good reason for our anger and attachment. When, on the other hand, we consider that everything we experience results from a complex interplay of causes and conditions, we find that there is no single thing to desire or resent, and it is more difficult for the afflictions of attachment or anger to arise.

You don't see it, because I have a good filter, but Weblogsky gets thousands of comment spam per week. Movable Type doesn't seem to delete it automatically, though I've invoked that setting... it just piles up, and cleaning out the junk is painfully slow (probably because I'm set up with Berkeley DB and not mysql). Realilzing I don't have time to deal with it, I've disabled comments for now. My thought is to migrate to mysql at some point and see if that's better, but until then, no comments.

Don Jarrell sent me a link to this swell IEEE Spectrum article about Blake Ross, "The Firefox Kid."

from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.” Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox’s. There are differences between the two projects, however. Although Ross plans to incorporate the talents and passions of the free-software community, he’s building Parakey around a for-profit business model. And he’s leading the charge with a simple battle cry: “One interface, not two!”

A new volcanic island just appeared near Tonga. [Link]

The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the northern Tongan islands group of Vava'u in August, reported on their Web log on August 12 that they saw streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water -- then "sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice."

They posted photos of huge "pumice rafts" that they encountered after passing Tonga's Late island while sailing toward Fiji.

"We were so fascinated and busy taking pictures that we plowed a couple of hundred meters into this surreal floating stone field before we realized that we had to turn back," wrote a crewman identified only as Haken.

The NY Times suggests that Web 3.0 will be a mashup of semnatic web with AI. The article mentions Austin-based Cycorp, which has been in development for a quarter century. [Link]

Cyc was originally built by entering millions of common-sense facts that the computer system would “learn.” But in a lecture given at Google earlier this year, Mr. [Doug] Lenat [Cyc's prime mover] said, Cyc is now learning by mining the World Wide Web — a process that is part of how Web 3.0 is being built.

Derek Woodgate and Luciana de Castro

A belated report on last weekend's Charrette Austin retreat. Charrette Austin is the latest manifestation of my attempt, with Derek Woodgate, to create a framework for discussion about Austin's cultural and social fragmentation, which in our opinion why Austin, a good and attractive place to live, is never quite a great city. At the retreat, Natasha Vita-More suggested that we focus on two root causes of fragmentation here, poor communication and dysfunctional transportation systems. We made a little side trip, attempting to define art – is it a thing? a process? a mind set? Otherwise the conversation flowed pretty well from Derek's set of slides on "engaging your environment" and "experiensualism." He showed photos of massive projections on the sides of buildings &ndash one was particularly striking, the image of a waterfall. After much discussion about breakouts (how would we divide the group? we couldn't quite get the second division straight), a group wandered outside, I think for a smoke, and Luciana de Castro had an idea. It was just the idea we were looking for, and it was an extension of the waterfall on the building we'd seen on Derek's slides. We would project images of mass transit on the sides of buildings in downtown Austin, clearly visible to the occupants of automobiles densely packed along IH35. Are we gonna do this? I suspect so.

Natasha Vita-More sits near my scribbles.

Blue Origin's private spaceport in West Texas launched a test on November 14. "The exact nature of the 6:30 a.m. launch or the type of spacecraft was not immediately known." (The Houston Chronicle notes that the company is "secretive." After all, the Virgin Galactic's just across the border, in New Mexico. [Link]

Pesco blogs a great Zadie Smith quote he found via Orange Crate Art:

But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.

More coverage of the LOTV Code-A-Thon: Joel Greenberg recorded a podcast on the scene, which he pitched to the local NPR affiliate, KUT. They didn't run it on the radio, but they did add it to their web site. [Link]

Interested in technology for politics and democracy? I'll be speaking on the subject at the December 5 meeting of the World Future Society in Austin. [Link]

In the 1990s online activists experimented with the Internet and the World Wide Web as a platform for a new kind of politics, leveraging interactive "many-to-many" tools to support both advocacy and deliberation. Early online activism focused on issues that were relevant to the Internet's strong "geek" element,"cyber liberties" issues of free speech and privacy. However in 2000, as Internet penetration was mainstreaming and reaching critical mass, the web became relevant to political campaigns. In the presidential campaign for election 2004, the Internet became an essential part of the political process. Howard Dean's short-lived front-runner status, a product of his campaign's effective use of Internet tools, proved that the Internet could have an effect. Though Dean was unsuccessful in his bid for the Democratic nomination, he continued to use web-based tools effectively to take control of the Democratic Party. Jon will answer the question, how is the Internet's role in politics evolving, and what are the implications for 2008?

Altman was more than a great director, he was natural. He didn't try to own the experiences he helped create; he shared them with his cast, crew, and audience. He never won an Academy Award, but they'll be teaching and talking about Altman long after other Academy Award-winning directors are forgotten.

Marsha and I spent Thanksgiving camping at the Guadalupe with my son Robert and his family. It was an adventure... out tent had twisted into a weird configuration that was beyond our ability to sort out, though grandson Colton (who has the mind of an engineer) was helpful, as was a ranger who agreed to stop by when he overheard Marsha at the park hq ("Where can I buy a tent??") It was on of those one-piece tents, though we could remove the skeleton from the fabric to straighten it out... we had many false starts before I realized we had the frame upside down. (Argh.) It took three hourse, but we finally set it up, learning important tent theory in the process. (The poles are almost always going to bend to tighten up the fabric, but I kept thinking they'd be straight). Photo at the top: grandson Colton with son Robert (far left) and Marsha. The other photo: Colton and Carson roasting marshamallows, a bit of relaxation at the end of the day.

The next day, Thanksgiving, we were swarmed by benign but persistent bees. They kept us from snacking (a Good Thing), but they nearly drove us crazy. They delayed our dinner til dusk, which is when they decided to call it a day. The ranger said the bees were dense all over the park.

I posted a few photos at Flickr.

Just thought I'd share the view from our living area... the leaves are finally changing!

At least, his last laugh with Rolling Stone's Peter Travers, in an article about his "rebel spirit":

The last laugh I shared with Altman onstage came when he was discussing A Prairie Home Companion. He said he had upset Garrison Keeler, who thought of the film based on his radio show as a light romp. Altman shook his head and said, "No it's not, it's a film about death. Virginia Madsen plays an angel who keeps picking people off. By the end of the picture she's practically taken the whole cast with her." In retrospect, Prairie feels even more like an elegy for a time past that won't come back. But Altman wouldn't go in for eulogies. "It's just death," he said, "nothing to be afraid of."

I'm giving a talk at the Central Texas World Future Society meeting next Tuesday, inspired by Extreme Democracy, the book Mitch Ratcliffe and I edited in 2004. Given the audience, I'll talk about the future of web-based political technology. My views are definitely not utopian, but I'll try to avoid going dystopian.

Found via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools: "incredible stuff, believable prices!" I'm digging into the office supplies, but there's over twenty other categories to check out... like toys, perfect for Christmas shopping. [Link]

Our pals at Make Magazine have published an online Open Source gift guide. Examples: Ubuntu with support, the Make Daisy MP3 player kit, and the Game of Life (cellular automata) Board.

Last February I wrote about the issues with Zillow's market analysis tool. Realtor® Magazine Online reported on October 30 that the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes equal access to credit and capital for underserved communities, has filed a complaint about Zillow with the Federal Trade Commission.

...NCRC insists that Zillow's home-valuation tool is inaccurate and misleading. An audit by NCRC reveals that Zillow's so-called "Zestimates" are wrong over 67 percent of the time, and many home owners have expressed concerns about valuations that are too high or too low.