Cool! I hadn't heard of this one.

I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter

A bill under debate in the French Parliament may require iPods to be able to play music purchased from competing Internet services, not just Apple Computer's own iTunes Music Store, forcing changes in the business model that gave rise to the revolution in legal digital music downloads.

France Weighs Forcing iPods to Play Other Than iTunes

The FOAF project is based around the use of machine readable Web homepages for people, groups, companies and other kinds of thing. To achieve this we use the "FOAF vocabulary" to provide a collection of basic terms that can be used in these Web pages. At the heart of the FOAF project is a set of definitions designed to serve as a dictionary of terms that can be used to express claims about the world. The initial focus of FOAF has been on the description of people, since people are the things that link together most of the other kinds of things we describe in the Web: they make documents, attend meetings, are depicted in photos, and so on.

Apparently, there's a standard (which LJ, at least supports). I wonder if there's anything interesting that does anything with it yet...

FOAF Vocabulary Specification

Earlier this year we requested your questions on one of ICANN’s most heated discussions—issues involving top-level domains (TLDs)—which we passed on to Vint Cerf, Google’s VP and Chief Internet Evangelist and chairman of the board of ICANN. Despite an understandably heavy schedule, Vint Cerf has taken the time to personally respond to more questions than we had originally anticipated. So with our special thanks, here are his responses.

Vint Cerf even answered 3 of Decius' questions.

Answers from Vint Cerf: The Road Ahead for Top-Level Domains

New Web 2.0 venture!

"People always used to approach me to try and talk about this or that. I wanted to punch them in the throat. Now they leave me the hell alone. Thanks isolatr!" - Doc Searls

woo!

isolatr beta

No matter the legal context, terminating a wanted pregnancy is no one's first choice, but for the time being at least, when faced with a fetus that will become a severely handicapped child, all the choices are bad.

A Wrongful Birth?

Space Exploration Technologies Inc. - Better known as SpaceX - is developing its own manned spacecraft. Indeed, they've been at this for several years. Its name is "Dragon."

The SpaceX Dragon: America's First Privately Financed Manned Orbital Spacecraft? | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

Decius wrote:

AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will acquire smaller rival BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock, in a deal that goes a long way toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system.

Night of the living dead...

The breakup of ATT in the early 80s didn't necessarily make a lot of sense anyway, in particular, it only created competition in long distance but failed to do anything about the monopoly on the cable plant. Its easy to lay fiber or put up microwave towers to link up COs; its really hard to build out the last mile to everyone's house and whoever owns that wins. At least until wireless came into the picture.

Pretty soon, all across the country, you will be able to get voice, video and data (aka data, data and data) to your house from either of Bell or Comcast or maybe even satellite TV and CDMA/GSM voice and WiMax data. I've long wondered if the the competitive landscape becoming a little more uniform by way of choices between multiple "one stop shop" players could end up being a net win for consumers.

RE: CNN.com - AT&T reaches deal to buy BellSouth - Mar 5, 2006

AT&T Corp. is planning to acquire BellSouth Corp., according to several people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Whoa!!

AT&T Is Said to Be Near Deal for BellSouth

The impending legal battles put us on the verge of repeating the last two decades of the abortion war: anti-abortion victory, abortion rights backlash. At the end of the cycle 20 years from now, we'll be right back where we are today. Unless, that is, we find a way out.

Gold star.

Life After Roe