Posts from — December 2003

Andy Oram on WSIS. O'Reilly's Andy Oram: “While ICANN has bumbled many tasks and exceeded its authority on others, its leaders have a sense of the fragility of the Internet ecology. The ITU, in contrast, is tromping all over the grounds just in the process of mapping it. I find it amusing that, in their search for a boogie man, they have ceded to ICANN far more authority than anyone else has.” Bingo.

Well worth reading the whole article. [Lextext]

Plans for UN Internet Agency. More from AllAfrica.com: “[D]eveloping nations believe…that the UN should set up a special agency to run the Internet. The US delegation, realizing that it was fighting a losing battle, tried to delay the discussions by deferring the issue until 2005 when the second phase of the summit is due to be held in Tunisia. However, UN Secretary General Koffi Annan announced a decision to set up a working group already that has been tasked with drawing up plans for a new UN agency to be approved in Tunis.” [Lextext]

The View from Africa. This is a doozy. Look at how the compromise to put over discussion of ICANN until 2005 is being viewed in Africa. Here's the story from AllAfrica.com: “The transference of Internet governance from US corporation ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to the United Nations has been viewed as one of the biggest victories for the developing world. The UN has been given until 2005 to take control of the digital highway.” Whoa. [Lextext]

WSIS Compromise on ICANN. EurActiv.com News: “After an intensive round of negotiations over the weekend, the negotiators were able to reach a compromise over the three outstanding controversial issues, clearing the way for the actual Summit:…(2) internet governance: the question of who should run the internet (the American semi-private body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) or a regulatory body of the UN, as proposed by the developing countries. The controversy was solved by putting the issue on the back burner: the UN will set up a working party which will report back to the 2005 Tunesia Summit;…” [Lextext]

Government benefits: screwing the young. Screwing the young. American government benefits will give a typical man reaching age 65 today a net windfall of more than $70,000 beyond what he paid in. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits. [MetaFilter]

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mmmmm, fun…….. luckily my generation isn't greedy, made a freudian slip as 'is greedy' well we're not populous, so it doesn't matter anyway.

Who would have EVER imagined this would happen

Schwarzenegger retreats on key campaign vows

Retreating from two central campaign promises that helped make him governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday dropped his personal “guarantee” that cities and counties would be compensated for billions in lost car-tax revenue and reversed his pledge to safeguard spending for public schools.

[Politics in the Zeros]

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not i, it was clear to me that arnold was always the epitome of virtue, and would never ever go back on his word, and why should he? he asserted that he had near dictatorial power when he was elected, he should use those powers and make california a neoliberal ideal as he intends.

Flash snowman-builder. Build your own snowman using Chris Guy's snowman-builder. [MetaFilter]

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yup, play with it for a few minutes.

Open Textbook Project. Open Textbook Project
http://otp.inlimine.org/

The mission of the open textbook project is to develop openly copyrighted (copylefted) textbooks using the free software development model. The books, developed collaboratively, would be freely available to download, modify, print and distribute. Not only are textbooks unavailable to a great number of students in the US and abroad simply due to cost, few textbooks are universally suitable for courses in any given subject and many are simply sub-standard. The Open Textbook Project aims to address these issues by using a collaborative development model which has proven its effectiveness in the world of free software. [Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker]

The Word on Text Mining. The Word on Text Mining by Seth Grimes
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/031210/619decision1_1.shtml

Text analytics provide concept discovery, automated classification, and innovative displays for volumes of unstructured documents. This article written by Seth Grimes for Intelligent Enterprise gives the latest and most current happenings on text mining on the Internet. [Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker]

IBM values the text analytics market to $10 billion in five years. According to Bob Carlson the enterprise text analytics market is growing from $400 million today to $10 billion in five years (excluding search). Bob Carlson is a VP and the program director for the IBM WebFountain initiative that we have… [unstruct.org - Unstructured Information Management]