Bits & Pieces

A nice summary of sheer scope of the Interwebs today. Amazing.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Facebook is the most popular “social media” site on the interwebs. I think it has serious issues, and I have deleted my account.

The New York Review of Books currently contains a thoughtful history of the site, its reasons for growth and its weaknesses. It si written by Charles Peterson of n+1 and is well worth a full read.

The first sign that Facebook might cause trouble came, for many, when a few unexpected members showed up—those who didn’t attend your college, or at least one of the same caliber. Especially for students who had graduated from a public high school and then gone on to an elite private college, the addition of state universities marked a turning point, as former classmates joined the site and started asking to be “friends.” A major attraction of the early Facebook, it was suddenly apparent, came from its snob appeal—the fact that some had been kept out, and only a highly selective few let in.

The mechanics of these “friend requests” are worth describing in some detail. Within a single college, in the early days of the site, everyone could see everything. You “friended” a fellow student not to see her page but to add her name and picture, like a trophy, to your list of friends; this “friend list” then appeared not far from your lists of favorite books and favorite music, more evidence of your discriminating tastes, or proof of your popularity. If a college acquaintance wanted to look at your page, she could simply type in your name—just as she might glance your way on the quad, or eavesdrop on your conversation in the dining hall.

Zuckerberg, however, cordoned off each college from all others. The “friend request” then took on a new function, becoming the means of authorizing people at other schools to see your page. The only way someone at a state university, for instance, could access the page of a student at a private college was by asking to become “friends.” But unlike when a student at a private college might run into an old acquaintance on winter break, it was impossible to politely respond to such a request while giving little away. You had to say yes or no.

Bourdieu, it now appeared, might have been right. When Facebook had been limited to a few elite schools, listing Beethoven among one’s “favorite music” could easily stand as a statement of aesthetic discovery. This was due to that other salutary fiction of an elite meritocratic education: that class distinctions disappear, to be replaced by pure judgment and analytic reason. But beneath the gaze of one’s former classmates, such a claim might well come off as a pose. It was no longer possible to treat the site as an extension of an elite college—the private haunt of one’s “most cultivated” contemporaries.

Google has just announced it is planning to launch a high speed data network operating at up to 1 gigabit speeds. Wow!

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

And they appear to be doing so in conjunction with local governments who are being asked to apply, which is a great way to go, given the foot-dragging by for-profit ISPs in bringing the US truly high speed data.

As the New York Times is reporting, there is currently an international effort underway to negotiate a new treaty primarily aimed at protecting intellectual property.  And it is being done in secret.

Behind a veil of secrecy, the United States, the European Union, Japan and other countries are forging ahead with plans to coordinate an international crackdown on illegally copied music, movies, designer bags and other goods that change hands in sidewalk souks and Internet bazaars.

Negotiators, under intense pressure from media companies, luxury brands and other corporate victims of piracy, are scrambling to complete a so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by the end of the year.

But the process is running into growing criticism from Internet campaigners, lawmakers and even some people involved in it.

Since when is it good policy to negotiate law in secret and primarily for the benefit of private parties rather than sound policy reasons? One of the possible approaches apparently being considered would mandate some sort of regulations that would require ISPs to disconnect customers who content provider claim have engaged in illegal file sharing. Where is the due process? Why isn’t this just a way for a private industry to get law enforcement for its own protection for free?

More from the EFF, Public Knowledge and James Love.

Your Federal government continues to insist that ISPs should be required to keep records of internet usage by their customers for use in criminal investigations. Think of this a the equivalent of having your geographic location tracked and provided to the government at its request. Compare it to requiring your library to track books you check out, or your local video store being required to provide to the government the videos you rent. (I think that Robert Bork might have something to say about that.)

The FBI claims this merely allows them to continue to do traditional investigation. But that is not the case. It is a blatant invasion of privacy.

What happens when a husband constantly talks in his sleep? Well, in the age of the Internet, his wife records the statements and then posts them on a web site.  The web site is of course called Sleep Talkin’ Man.  Caution: Not for children.

Oh, and here is a video interview with the couple.

Gotta love the fact that he performs Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.

For those of you wondering what a mash up of the Lady Gaga and Christopher Walken would sound like…..

Did you know that the major countries around the world are in the process of negotiating a treaty to govern copyright law around the world? The treaty is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).  No surprise if you didn’t know, because the treaty is being negotiated in secret, based on claims of national security.

Despite the lack of transparency, provisions are leaking out. Those particularly that relate to the Internet are outrageous and over-reaching to a degree unprecedented. Take a look.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation is working the issue and deserves your support if you care about unfettered access to the Internet.

The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.

A new Microsoft ad for their Bing search engine. Is this supposed to make you want to use it? Does Microsoft actually think this will lure people in to give Bing a spin?

Here is a good ad put together by a new phone type pointing out the iPhone’s limitations and the new phone works on the Verizon network….and wouldn’t we all like to leave AT&T.  Sell Apple stock today!!!!

xkcd via The Big Picture

The New York Times has profiled a site, Swoopo, that holds auctions for expensive items. The auctions often result in very low prices, but in order bidders are charged $.60 for each bid. And those bids really add up.

“In aggregate, consumers trying to obtain these products are overpaying,” said Glen Whitney, a mathematician and a former quantitative analyst at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who was asked to evaluate Swoopo. “Unless you have an edge over other people who are bidding, and you can get them to subsidize your purchase, you shouldn’t do it. It’s a chump’s game.”

Here is a very interesting post about the nature and reality of Google Street View as a strange new category of photography, including a number of images. Street View is both amazing and sometimes disturbing, as shown in the Street View photo below.

Eagle Point Dr, Sherwood, Pulaski, Arkansas

If you spend any time at all online, and especially on Twitter, you know the widespread use of “epic fail” as a perjorative indicating not just a failure, but a failure complete in its wrongness. The derivation of this term is covered in some detail on today’s New York Times’ On Language column.

In a few years’ time, the use of fail as an interjection caught on to such an extent that particularly egregious objects of ridicule required an even stronger barb: major fail, überfail, massive fail or, most popular of all, epic fail. The intensifying adjectives hinted that fail was becoming a new kind of noun: not simply a synonym for failure but, rather, a derisive label to slap on a miscue that is eminently mockable in its stupidity or wrongheadedness. Online cynics deploy fail as a countable noun (“That’s such a fail!”) and also as a mass noun that treats failure as an abstract quality: the offending party is often said to be full of fail or made of fail.

Also related to Twitter is today’s column by Virginia Heffernan regarding the use of #hastags on the service.

Profit at Comcast Increases 53%, Largely on Higher Prices