Most of the reasons that Comcast isn’t my ISP have to do with its aggressive opposition to net neutrality. But there’s also a substantial quality of service issue: see, for example, Steven M. Bellovin, An Outage from Managing P2P Traffic?.
Not that I love AT&T, or that their net neutrality politics are so much better. But their service seems somewhat better, and they’re a little less in-your-face about their views.
I'm teaching issues relating to search engines this this week in Internet Law, and one of the issues I'm doing is the problem of search engine bias.
How nice of Wired.com to run an article showing just how relevant my class can be:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word “abortion,” concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.
Lots more where that came from….
Update: The Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health weighs in — and says the right things.
There's A War Crimes Tribunal in Your Future.
I've been saying this for a long time, and think it is as true, or more true, than ever. The critical issue, though, is not so much the presence of absence of immunity for various actors so much as a national unwillingness to bring the guilty to justice. Only when a nation will not police its own does the international community have a right (and duty) to step in.
PS. Read the article by Philippe Sands, The Green Light, that Balkin links to.
Word is, the new Firefox 3 is a big improvement over version 2 — faster, cooler, etc.
Personally, I have so many plugins running that I don't just wait for a new firefox to be out of beta but wait about three weeks for all the plugins to catch up. (Betas tend to break plugins, and many plugins lag even the final releases.)
But it's nice to read that there is a way to Try Out Firefox 3 Risk-Free with a Portable Version. Theoretically, if you follow the instructions you can run F3 without hurting your F2.
Maybe this weekend….
Short and very funny, Wikihistory (via boingboing)
At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?
Google has unveiled what looks to be a Really Useful Service as an enhancement to its Gmail (eternal Beta). They call it “custom time”.
New! Gmail Custom TimeTM
Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn't slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.
A Google approach to email.
Gmail is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful. And maybe even fun. After all, Gmail has:
Less spam Keep unwanted messages out of your inbox with Google's innovative technology
Mobile access
Read Gmail on your mobile phone by pointing your phone's web browser to http://gmail.com/app. Learn moreLots of space Over 2757.272164 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.
Pre-date your messages
You tell us what time you would have wanted your email sent, and we'll take care of the rest. Need an email to arrive 6 hours ago? No problem.Mark as read or unread
Take sending emails to the past one step further. We let you make emails look like they've been read all along.Make them count
Use your custom time stamped messages wisely — each Gmail user gets ten per year.Worry less
Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered.I can imagine so many uses…. Do be sure to note the various limits on functionality.
Posted in Internet 10 Comments
© 2003-2024 A. Michael Froomkin. Unless otherwise stated, or copyright by others is indicated, textual content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license. This permits non-profit reproduction so long as credit is given to the author and any resulting work is shared under the same or similar license. Links are appreciated. Library photo in header © 2008 Alex Nikada.
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