Random Content, Rare Insight

Over the Summer of 2008, I am taking CREA S-25, one of several creative writing classes offered in the Extension School. The material is challenging but thankfully Julie Ann McNary makes every class worth the hours pouring through reading material and sweating through writing assignments. Writing is hard, my natural tendancy is towards summation or narrative, Wil Wheatons blog summarized (!) some of the frustration and enlightenment I’ve felt trying to grow as a writer.

I know xmlrpc is due for a refresh in the server upgrade to WordPressMU2.3. Heres a quick test post from Firefox Scribefire.

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Our LSTUE118 group has chosen to discuss the impact of voice integration in the Second Life MMO. We have chosen to focus on the divisive nature of the high-bandwidth, socially-relevant technology in particular text chat vs voice.

Read or hear my intro here

The Big Telcos have been leading a massive Lobbying charge in Washington to gain favour for a “Tiered Internet.” In question is the fundamental concept of “Network Neutrality”. The Telcos heavily favour interference in the data stream to bias the content-provider and client business model. They want to charge successful Internet companies to ensure content arrives smoothly.

I, pessimistically, foresee the intrusive oversight efforts being granted by the current administration, probably in the light of a Law Enforcement intiative.

My argument is that the exterminated p2p companies (the infringing Napster and Grokster) prove that Tiers are not only unnecessary but also that (most importantly) in destroying Network Neutrality, the Telcos lose the “Safe Harbour” provisions of Internet Legislation (like the Napsters etc). Plainly speaking, if you can filter Good content and be paid for it, we can also force them to be responsible for the Bad. We can envision a scenario where a business can sue the Infringing provider for hosting a Zombie-net in the event of a outbreak. The financial windfall will be heavily biased against the Telcos.

The full paper is available here

I’ve added some thoughts drawn from 15 years supporting lousy WAN infrastructures to a brief story here.

[Summary] Maintaining outmoded ISDN, ATM and frac-T/E’s really make the corporate-wan hub and spoke model more difficult than the practice. The VoIP/SIP model encourages corporate-WAN architects to move beyond the telco physical end-to-end mentality and think in 21st century tunnel terms, or at least investigate Groove and P2P swarming as the next model.

I have posted my midterm paper for the Lstue120 class to my blog. The subject matter directly relates to a previous post about iTunesU, this time less Harvard-centric. Its very hard to summarize such a broad topic in 5 pages so i used 6! The paper is available here.

Harvard, like many Ivy League institutions, has invested in extending its educational imperative across the internet. With the recent advent of Apples iTunes University, what does it mean for Harvard? Some thoughts on the issue are here….