"Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching (MPLampS) is an architecture for
carrying electricity over IP (with an MPLS control plane). According to our marketing department, MPLampS has the potential to dramatically lower the price, ease the distribution and usage, and improve the manageability of delivering electricity. This document is motivated by such work as SONET/SDH over IP/MPLS (with apologies to the authors). Readers of the previous work have been observed scratching their heads and muttering, "What next?". This document answers that question."

RFC3251

"This document describes the Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport (BLOAT): a reformulation of a widely-deployed network-layer protocol (IP [RFC791]), and two associated transport layer protocols (TCP [RFC793] and UDP [RFC768]) as XML [XML] applications. It also describes methods for transporting BLOAT over Ethernet and IEEE 802 networks as well as encapsulating BLOAT in IP for gatewaying BLOAT across the public Internet."

This years April Fools RFC's are more political than previous ones...

RFC3252:

This is the most whacked out April Fools joke I saw all day.

CNN.com - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates murdered at Los Angeles charity event - April 1, 2002

"The truth is that bridging the digital divide and improving education go hand in hand. Some of the most successful efforts to bridge the divide have occurred through community technology centers, or CTCs. These CTCs offer public Internet access, but perhaps more importantly, they offer learning opportunities--opportunities for people to learn how to use the Internet effectively, augment their reading and job skills, even prep for the U.S. citizenship exam. "

My take on this is that non-profits use the "digital divide" as a justification for funding. Unfortunately it blurs things that shouldn't be blurred. Obviously poor people can benefit from education, access, and services. This does not mean that technology forms a barrier to social mobility. My highschool banned pagers and cellphones because in the early 90's they were associated with drug dealing (and hence the lower class). Its only recently that high schools have accepted the idea that teenagers can use mobile telecom technology for legitimate purposes. Who adopts technologies fast? The people who stand to gain the most from them, irrespective of their social status.

Digital divide still very real - Tech News - CNET.com

"A Web site sponsored by Microsoft and Unisys as a way to steer big companies away from the Unix operating system is itself powered by Unix software.
The site, dubbed "We have the way out," runs on Web servers powered by FreeBSD, an open-source version of Unix, along with the Unix-based Web server Apache, according to Netcraft, which tracks Web site information."

High-profile anti-Unix site runs Unix - Tech News - CNET.com

"My bet with Martin Nisenholtz at the Times says that the tide has turned, and in five years, the publishing world will have changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want. "

Long Bets [ Bet 2: In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site. ]

The purpose of the Long Bets Foundation is to improve long-term thinking. Long Bets is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake. The foundation furnishes the continuity to see even the longest bets through to public resolution. This website provides a forum for discussion about what may be learned from the bets and their eventual outcomes.

...

The Long Bets Foundation was started in 02001 as a 501(c)(3) public education nonprofit foundation, based in California. It is a partial spin-off from The Long Now Foundation, which is building a 10,000-year Clock and tools for a 10,000-year Library. Long Bets is one of the Library tools.

Long Bets

"The U.S. is principally a transit and destination country for trafficking in persons. It is estimated that 45,000 to 50,000 people, primarily women and children, are trafficked to the U.S. annually. The U.S. Government is strongly committed to combating trafficking in persons at home and abroad. The Act enhances pre-existing criminal penalties, affords new protections to trafficking victims, and makes available certain benefits and services to victims of severe forms of trafficking; establishes a Cabinet-level federal interagency task force to investigate and prosecute trafficking, and establishes a federal pilot program to provide services to trafficking victims. The U.S. government recognizes the need to sustain and further enhance our efforts in order to achieve the goals and objectives of the Act.
The U.S. Department of State began monitoring trafficking in persons in 1994, when the issue began to be covered in the Department's Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Originally, coverage focused on trafficking of women and girls for sexual purposes. Our understanding of the problem has broadened over the years, and U.S. embassies worldwide now routinely monitor and report on cases of trafficking in men, women, and children for forced labor in agriculture, domestic service, construction work, and sweatshops, as well as trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation."

The state of slavery in the USA and abroad.

"Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who represents a Los Angeles-area district, sent a letter to fellow lawmakers Wednesday asking them to support his own strict anti-piracy legislation, which he plans to introduce later this year. "

Net anti-piracy debate heads for House - Tech News - CNET.com

"Now suppose TiVo came out with a tiny, pen-shaped digital audio recorder. Once in your shirt pocket, it would continuously record the sound around you. At any time, while continuing to record, you could play back the last 20 minutes of whatever you've just heard: a co-worker's brilliant utterance, something you didn't quite catch on the car radio, or driving directions somebody rattled off too fast. (As on the real TiVo, it would continue recording even as it played back.)
Because it would always be on, you would never worry about missing something important. And no family argument would ever again devolve into, "But you said . . . " and, "No, that's not what I said!" "

Wish List: 9 Innovations in Search of Inventors