That kind of power to hinder or foster freedom of the Internet, centralized in a single government, is the crucial issue for many of the 12,000 people expected in Tunis this week for a United Nations summit meeting on the information age.

Four years of high-level talks on Internet governance will conclude with the meeting. On its eve, a figurative ocean separates the American position - that the Internet works fine as it is - from most of the rest of the world. That includes the European Union, which says the Internet is an international resource whose center of gravity must move away from Washington.

This even made Morning Edition on NPR this morning. Is all this fuss just about the root zone or is there more to it? We really need to find a way to throw the Europeans a bone in such a way that will placate them and at the same time not result in much substantive change while we try to figure out a non-disruptive way to get away from a centrally managed root.zone (which, btw, can be gotten from here)

Other Nations Hope to Loosen U.S. Grip on Internet

After years of indecision, Boeing announced a new and larger generation of the wide-body 747 jetliner today to do battle with the Airbus A380, the largest passenger jetliner ever built.

Boeing Takes On Airbus With New 747 Wide-Body Jets

McNealy: Energy efficiency and chip multi-threading are a big deal for Sun and major breakthroughs for the industry. We invested in this technology several years back when others were doubling down on press releases and dead-end operating systems like HP-UX [Hewlett-Packard Co's Unix operating system]. Sun moved in a different and seemingly controversial direction.

Who cares? If HP-UX is dead-end, then what does that make Solaris?

UltraSPARC T1 Fires Up Sun

ACCUSATIONS that the US Patent office is giving out dotty patents were given some credence this week after the magazine Nature discovered that the watchdog had just granted one to a bloke who claimed to have invented an anti-gravity machine.

US grants patent for anti-gravity device

It is an idea that has been successful in London, and is now being whispered in the ears of City Hall officials after months of behind-the-scenes work by the Partnership for New York City, the city's major business association: congestion pricing.

This is on the table in SF as well. Apparently, its been rather successful in London.

Driving Around Manhattan, You Pay, Under One Traffic Idea

Sheerin entered the Ansari X Prize with plans for a V2 rocket-derived, reusable manned spacecraft dubbed the Canadian Arrow. ARCA – short for Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association – also cast its Orizont vehicle in the manned suborbital contest with plans for a reusable rocket engine built from composite materials.

Somehow, I hadn't heard that detail before. Now where was it that I'd heard this idea before...

Former X Prize Rivals Announce Partnership

"We have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time - mark this well - have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth; we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era of transportation, that of space travel."

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V2ROCKET.COM - The A-4/V-2 Resource Site - The V-2 Rocket

Google, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon.com and InterActiveCorp representatives said in letters and statements to a U.S. House of Representatives panel that the new legislation it is preparing is too heavy-handed and favors certain technologies to the detriment of others.

Tech firms assail proposed broadband rules

Contact with Venus Express was established by ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt, Germany approximately two hours after lift-off. The spacecraft has correctly oriented itself in relation to the sun and has deployed its solar arrays.

Not like they know anything about rocket science in Darmstadt (*cough* vergeltungswaffe zwei *cough*)

Venus Express en route to probe the planet's hidden mysteries

The nation's major cellular phone carriers said yesterday that they had adopted a content rating system for video, music, pictures and games that they sell to cellphone users - a development that could pave the way for them to begin selling pornography and sex-oriented content on mobile devices.

Carriers Adopt Content Rating for Cellphones