Archive for June, 2006
Achievement
Do you remember the feeling right after you were able to do something really difficult? The pure happiness when you overcome the challenge?
This is probably how Ronie felt after she was able to pull herself to standing position today.
By the way, for those of you who asked me about the rain around here I have a picture of my poor attempt. More picture of Ronie can be found here .
I will take that for a start
Who said that nothing good can come out from a flood?
Link: IRS Closed for a Month for Flood Repairs
WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS headquarters will remain closed for at least a month to repair extensive flood damage that destroyed electrical systems and computer equipment, the agency said Thursday.
(Via Infectious Greed )
Late and undesirable
Reading this should cure from the notion the regulatory agencies has positive effect on the market. At best after long discussions and paper pushing they growing into completed irrelevancy; The problem is that they then try to force the market to comply with irrelevant regulations…
Link: As FCC Digs Into Ownership, Big Media No Longer Cares
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission voted to re-tackle the sticky issue of media ownership. This time, the agency plans to loosen some rules, allowing big media companies to expand. For instance, a newspaper will — for the first time since 1975 — probably be allowed to buy the most popular television station in the same city.
But the times, technology and media marketplace have changed so much since the FCC began its ownership review last time, in 2002, that some of the same media giants that lobbied for changes before — such as Tribune Co. — may take little advantage of changes this time.
Dealing with Vonage
I’m a Vonage customer for long time , In Vonage terms 19 months is like eternity. When I found about their new product, the V-phone , I thought it would be nice to have one so when I’m on the road I don’t need to re-configure my home network and to carry the router I got when I joined Vonage.
Calling Vonage customer service, to inquire about the V-phone and to find out how can I configure it with the same phone number I have at home, was amazing experience. My call was routed to an offshore location, which I wouldn’t mind if their English wasn’t worse than mine and if they would actually talk with me instead of reading me scripts. My request to keep the same number that I have now on both the router and the V-phone and being charged for additional line was too much for the person I spoke with to handle and all she could tell me was that I will need to pay additional $29 disconnect fee.
I’m considering switching my VoIP provider to a company that can give me real service - considering the options it probably would not be more expensive.
Blessed selfishness
So what’s really going on here? Instead of being taxed by the state, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are redirecting their wealth to their own private philanthropic organizations. The world is fragmenting into an ever increasingly hyperpolar place in which governments just another participant in the order of things. Some of that money I spent on Windows 2000 is now going to solving the malaria epidemic in Africa. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. But it certainly is one explanation of why smart, ambitious people go into business rather than politics.
(Anti social contracts )
Andrew Keen is worried, and He has very good reasons. On its face Bill Gates and Warren Buffet fulfilled the socialist altruistic ideal and are giving away the vast majority of great wealth the created. However this is a great selfish act, and it is shaking the moral over-righteousness argument that only efficient, or even possible charity is a government managed wealth distribution.
Gates and Buffet donating the money the earned to causes they believe in. It is their money, not Andrew Keen’s - although he its hard for him to accept it. By bypassing the the tax collector Gates and Buffet told Keen, and his alike, that they have no say about how this money should be spent - and never did.
The money that we earned is ours, we should not be forced to pay it for "Baseball District Tax", and We should be able to say that we are giving it away on our own terms , even if Andrew Keen doesn’t like it:
Ellison’s actions are the equivalent of refusing to pay one’s taxes after a change in government. Just as the globally minded Gates is the most acceptable face of the new digital plutocracy, so the anti social Ellison epitomizes the narcissistic amorality of too many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
Back to hieroglyphics
I love the fact that Israeli companies are in the front of innovation and high tech and my first intention is to support development made in Israel. However, and as bad as I feel, I cannot avoid writing that Zlango is a service that nobody need.
If it wasn’t bad enough when young people’s language and ability to write properly is ruined by shortcuts and emoticons Zlango suggest to degrade our written language and eloquence to the level of cave man . Michael Arrington is right when he write :
At first glance this is nothing more than a nifty piece of mobile software and a way to send icon based messages over inexpensive and ubiquitous SMS networks.
But I think the cultural implications of Zlango may be much deeper.
(although he meant to compliment Zlango)
And the real scary part is that Zlango and its hieroglyphics will become a success story.
What is in your phone bill
I knew that phone service is heavily taxed but today I found out that in some states part of the phone bill are taxes such as "Baseball District Tax" and "Football District Tax". and the most amazing thing is that when I shared this information with my co-workers was that they didn’t understand why I’m shocked…
Netgear’s new powerline router - very good news
I’m following the maturing of BPL technology and its penetration into the market . I argued before that the best protection against the monopoly and the neutrality of the content delivery isn’t relay on government regulation but on free competition. Hence a new technology that will bypass the Telco’s and Cable companies control on the last mile connection to the end user will provide real alternative and better choices for the consumers. It also provides some explanation for Google’s investment in such technologies.
Netgear’s new powerline router providing another piece in making BPL a relevant alternative. Although it handles the inside network it makes BPL more complete solution.
Link: Netgear Ships 200-Mbit/s Powerline Router
Netgear on Monday began shipping a new powerline router designed to distribute information around the home at speeds up to 200-Mbits per second over ordinary power lines.
Netgear’s 200-Mbps Powerline HD Adapter (model HDX101) and an associated kit (the HDXB101) both are based on the Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2) chipset, which provides the underlying hardware. The HDX101 adapter will be priced at $129.99, while the kit — which provides two adapters, to convert Ethernet to powerline technology and back again — will cost $249.99, according to Netgear.
The Netgear router is compliant with the Universal Powerline Association specification, and will carry the association’s label on the box. Powerline networking technology competes with Ethernet as well as wireless in terms of home networking standards; while Ethernet is prevalent within the office, home networking setups tend to favor wireless, for reasons of cost and convenience.
You can read more about the capabilities of this router here.
The Plagiarism fighter
Today’s incident exposed me to what is apparently a large phenomena in the blogosphare. luckily we also have people like Jonathan Bailey . A short comment from Jonathan offering advise and help , made me aware of his blog and his fight against Spam blogs (Sblogs) and Plagiarism.
Your help is highly appreciated Jonathan.
Spam blogs and plagiarism
Here is an aspect of plagiarism we need to find a way to block. When I access the admin section of the blog I saw a new link to my site by a site called "Divorce Lawyer NY". Checking the link I discover that my post about freedom of speech in Poland become part of spam blog.
Looking around I saw that the site linked to my original post, probably to protect themselves legally. The content of the post is based only on the original post without any addition of content from the spam blog, they however posting the name of the author as their own. The only thing that changes is that the site mark key words that will drive the type of advertisement they want. I wasn’t able to see how they effect the search results, and I will not help them by linking from this post, but in blog search they appearing pretty high in the result.
So it seems that by by stilling content, based on certain key words, inserting advertisement in a disguise of links in the post and manipulating the search results become a money maker for this guys. This was not my intention when I wrote what I wrote and worse than that - I have no Idea how to protect my content from such use. I will be happy to get some ideas how to fight it.