Steve’s Tech Journal

The NY Times wrote this morning about a new French law that would fine and/or imprison web site operators who have sites advocating achieving “thinness” via extreme means such as eating disorders, anorexia, and bulimia.

This is the dark side of the long tail.  We talk about how the long tail can help small user communities aggregate around an obscure or non-mainstream interest.   We usually mean this in a positive sense, a local music band, or an out of print poetry author.   What if that interest is something that is decidedly non healthy, and what if site operators openly promote such interests and make it appealing for people to join and try the unhealthy behavoir?

The French have decided to outlaw it in this case.  I wish them luck.  How can any single nation state regulate the  internet?   If a US site operator uses a russian ISP and has such information available in French, or English for that matter, what can the French government really do about it?   This is the brave new world mankind created with the internet, full of wonderful new things but also with dark corners and alleyways that we have to teach our children to avoid.

If you’re interested in VoIP and you’re not reading Ike Elliot’s Telecosm, you should be. Ike is a former Level(3) exec turned industry consultant and blogger, and he’s doing a great job.

I was catching up on Telecosm today and came across this post where he comments on Andy’s speculation that Kevin O’Hara’s departure from Level(3) might be preparatory to an acquisition of XO, Global Crossing and/or Sprint. He writes …

the company is still playing catch-up on the string of acquisitions it made for the past several years. Like a contestant at a speed-eating contest, they were plowing through hot dogs until they got to the one labeled Broadwing, and they choked. The Heimlich maneuver has included re-assigning leading executives to focus on the problem, and re-forecasting 2008 revenues, and now the departure of the President and COO. That’s a lot of indigestion, so I don’t think the company is ready to start shoveling in more hot dogs right now

I laughed so hard, this is quite the entertaining analogy. Having some good friends remaining at Level(3), I hope their dose of pepto-bismal  is getting things settled down (now there’s a site with a lot of pink!).

Technorati Tags: level3, ike elliot, andy abramson,

It’s the third week of March, it must be time for San Jose and Spring VON.    It is, it is.   And I in fact arrived last night to beautiful sunny weather here in the Bay Area.

It’s a lightning visit for me this year, as I have to head out tomorrow morning for some client meetings.   But that makes me more determined to maximize my time here, to see old friends, to conduct some business, and to get current on the trends and nuances in the IP communications industry.   We already started last night with an excellent town hall moderated by Jonathan Askin (now Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, and blogging here), where we explored the policy playing field and who’s pushing for what at the FCC and congress.   The ususal suspects get up in arms, but I don’t know, maybe the nice weather mellowed me out but my sense is that things are going ok, and that there is siginificant public will behind network neutrality.  I mean, look how fast Comcast got slammed down with their bittorrent fiasco.

No speaking engagement for me this visit.   I was offered a chance to moderate a fun panel on what to do with all those phone numbers as people retire second and third lines; but it’s after I leave.  (I was able to pass this opportunity  along to Michael Cerda of Jangl, who is the perfect moderator for this topic — should be a good session and I wish I could attend)

I also attended the VON advisory board dinner, where we had a great discussion about the role of face to face conferences and trade shows in the increasingly internet web 2.0 world.    We also talked about the dark clouds on the economic horizon, and what this might mean in particular for the telco industry.    My own perspective is a bit contrarian in that I think  there is quite a lot of money to be saved by moving to IP communications technologies. and in economic downtime the CFOs of enterprise get very interested when you tell them that you can cut 40% of their NETEX costs.  But of course this is what Ampersand does for a living, so I might be expected to have that perspective.

Technorati Tags: Spring 2008 Von

OK it’s really time, the old site has to go!   We’ll see how productive I can be, come back on Monday.

Technorati Tags: Ampersand old site

necropost– (verb) to post a message to the guild forum after you have /gquit. (noun) a message posted to the forum by a member who has /gquit.

(thanks yroa — great word!)

UPDATE — seems it’s been around awhile — I’m so out of touch:)

Technorati Tags: necropost, yroa

For reasons unknown to me (but probably known to my wife), I spied an antique looking book on our kitchen counter while heating some water for tea. It turns out to be a 1904 printing of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Conduct of Life (checked out from the Carlisle library, where it’s probably been since 1904).

I flipped open to a random page, and read the following paragraph:

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight. And, though a man cannot return into his mother’s womb, and be born with new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies, which are the best succedanea which the case admits. The first is, the stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity, and concentrating our force on one or a few points; as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf of twigs.

The essay continues to give the second economy, (but you’ll have to go read it, i found the complete essay online). But, it’s his first economy that stopped me. In today’s internet age, it is *so* easy to find distractions. I open a browser and see my bloglines unread list. Any newspaper on the globe is a click away. Friends and colleagues are launching new startups and products — I want to study them all but can’t find the time. The result is “a spindling of my energy into a sheaf of twigs”. This passage really hit home for me. Now, hmmm, what to do about it.

I’ve got an idea where to start, though. Marilyn, if you’re looking for your book, I have it :).

Technorati Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson, internet,