A point of view by Bruce Sterling at Worldchanging regarding the WSIS

Interesting.

Although he says « diplomats abandoned their podiums to go mix it up with hardware vendors. That behavior is unheard of », which suggests that he is not familiar with ITU activities, besides the fact that it is an old organisation, the conclusion is « Imagine that — what if that actually worked? ». Which is hard to disagree with…

Worth reading. (I have reservations concerning the link to the WSF issues however)

[via BoingBoing]

Open standards/closed implementations? When you have a public/open spec that can’t be implemented without licensing some IPR’s.

Closed standards/open implementations? When you want open implementations conforming to the original spec. Sun thinks it might be interesting. Exercise is left to the reader to guess who else might be reflecting on this same issue.

Brendan Luyt in First Monday: « New information and communication technologies are seen as a potent source of advancement for many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and have increasingly featured as topics of discussion in international fora. Who benefits from the rapid rise of this issue on the international agenda? This article argues that the promotion of the digital divide as a policy issue benefits four major groups: information capital, developing country governments, the development « industry, » and global civil society. »

[Emerging Technologies]

From BoingBoing and WorldChanging

GeekCorps founder Ethan Zuckerman (whose org sends volunteers nerds from around the world to Africa to help extend technology to some of the world’s poorest nations) has a great essay up about the ways in which blogs currently fail to bridge the gap to Africa and how this can be changed.

update: also on SmartMobs, with more background on the paper

Information Technology Security Resource for Developing Countries:

The World Bank infoDev program has recently published an « Information
Technology Security Handbook, » oriented to the needs of individuals,
small businesses, governments and system and network administrators in
developing countries. The Handbook is now available on-line.

[via Dave Farber’s IP]

J’ai un compte Gmail que j’ai décidé d’utiliser pour recevoir des mailing lists. J’avais un peu démissionné des mailing lists dans la grande débacle des .mac gratuits, que j’avais harnachés pour gérer le flot.

Grand bien m’en pris: j’ai découvert les fils RSS.

Mais bon. Donc, vous connaissez des listes intéressantes (juridiques, politique, et cie) qui ne sont pas disponibles sous format RSS?

Apple a updaté iTunes. Entre autres, on peut maintenant « autoriser » sa musique sur 5 ordinateurs/iPods (plutôt que 3) et on peut graver une même playlist 7 fois (plutôt que 10 précédemment). Ouain pis? En tout cas, ca fait prendre conscience de :

Apple reserves the right to change the terms and conditions of sale at the iTunes Music Store at any time. Customers are encouraged to review the Sales Policies on a periodic basis for modifications.

C’est quand même intéretsant de réaliser que la licence des morceaux déjà « achetés » a des termes flottants.

Il y a d’autres changements apparemment, concernant les formats de DRM et de DAAP, mais bon, ca ne modifie pas vraiment les droits accordés précédemment, ca, ahem, renforce leur gestion.

Je voulais cettte nuit copier-coller des citations de PDFs « images ». J’ai bien fait de faire un peu de rattrappage sur mon agrégateur: PDFforlawyers.com a de chouetttes tutoriels.

Je savais confusément que c’était possible de faire du OCR sur un PDF, mais je n’avais jamais eu le coup de pied au derriere pour me faire essayer.

brunmarde.com: Vonage va offrir le service de téléphonie par voie IP au Canada, plus d’infos….

Plus de details sur Vonage.ca

Well it looks like an 11th hour deal was reached at WSIS.

The process was obviously very tense, with observers being excluded from the meeting (although apparently ICANN’s president was the one targeted by the move).

I will reserve my opinion on the topic until I have time to read more.

Merci Cla. J’espère que tu vas pouvoir dormir d’ici à mercredi et finalement profiter de ton nouvel appart!

[update: more from the BBC, note the difference of tone between the Reg/BBC articles and the Washington Times. The draft declaration is here. The ITU site for the event has more goodies.]

Slashdot links to this interesting interview of Arthur C. Clarke on information pollution.

The article is posted on Oneworld.net, of which rabble.ca is a partner.

Along with the CMAQ, they provide a good alternative to traditionnal news outlets.

Alternatives, which is the organisation I’m going to India with, is involved with all three projects.

a WSIS weblog

Orbicom, the International Network of UNESCO Chairs in Communications that was jointly created with the Université du Québec à Montréal, has contributed a report to WSIS: Bridging the digital divide… and beyond:

It sets high standards in international benchmarking and places particular emphasis on developing countries. Its unique features are:

• a cohesive conceptual Framework, which goes beyond connectivity measures and logically incorporates skills, as well as offers rich analytical linkages
• explicit measurements both across countries at a given point in time and within countries over-time in such a way that comparisons are not reduced to changing rankings from year to year
• policy relevant results on a component-by-component basis
• immediate benchmarking against the average of all countries (Hypothetica) and the planet as a whole (Planetia)
• use of existing and reliable data sets with a sound and transparent statistical methodology

The empirical application of the model covers a great number of countries. Measurements of networks are offered for 192 countries, covering 99% of the population of the planet; of skills and overall Infodensity for 153 countries representing 98% of the population; of Info-use 143 countries and overall Infostate 139 countries, both accounting for 95% of the global population. The results are based on 21 variables, reliable, tested and available to all and extends over the 1996-2001 period.

Thanks Cla!

C’est qui ce clown au National Post qui écrit des trucs ridicules qui font de la peine a quelqu’un qui m’est cher?

Il a un bon point: «China and Saudi Arabia are among those pressing for a UN-directed Internet». C’est un point qui mérite réflexion. Le reste est pas fort fort.

Sa conclusion?
«Bureaucrats, above all the politicized and slow-moving bureaucrats who infest the UN, could only harm the Net. Still, it’s no wonder they want to get their hands on it. It’s everything they are not, the ultimate in decentralization, a spontaneously growing global institution and the antithesis of world government».

Je doute qu’on habite la même planète monsieur le «Canadian Journalist» et moi, ca expliquerait qu’on ne semble pas utiliser le même Internet.