The ship has already sailed on the question of whether or not it's reasonable for the government to collect evidence about everyone all the time so that it can be used against them in court if someone accuses them of a crime or civil tort. This is just another brick in the wall.
A Bernstein survey says 35% of Web video watchers might dump their cable TV provider in favor of online video within 5 years. That's not too alarming by itself, says Bernstein's Jeff Lindsay -- that's in line with the amount of people who typically say they'd cut the cord because of price.
More interesting: Web video watchers don't want to dump cable because it's too expensive. Instead, mostly because of content.
Paul Kedrosky:
There have been a number of articles lately about people cutting costs by cancelling/cutting cable TV service.
Christopher Lawton:
The cable-cutting trend isn't just being driven by pinched personal budgets.
Flynn23:
All of this 'chaos' in the economy is really the result of a transition to an information-based economy.
John Gapper, for FT, in 2007:
Microsoft is trying to differentiate itself from Google by portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders than Google.
Decius, from 2007:
Ultimately, content is not king, and filters are not king. Bandwidth, and the money that funds it, is king. There will be as many social frameworks as there are societies. There will be many content producers, a small number of which will make money. But the market will only sustain a few free video hosting systems. It's not about production cost or end user value. It's about marginal cost. You can copy a floppy but you can't copy a server.
"I couldn't use my home phone, I couldn't use my cell phone, I couldn't use my computer. I was miserable."
"I worry about people that don't have a car," Lijon said.
"We literally feel like were on an island right now," Nguyen said. "It's bringing us back to the Stone Age."
From the archive:
To be sure, time marches on.
Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.
It just takes too long to compose a message with 140 characters, and then you start getting bombarded by a few tweets and it's like, hundreds of characters that you have to read.
Samantha Power:
There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
Neal Stephenson:
Hey, wait a minute, the hacker tourist says to himself, I thought AT&T was the enemy.
First it was time of day. Now this. Are land lines the next to go? Or maybe paper phone books.
After years of seeing its public pay-phone business migrate to cell phones, AT&T Inc. said Monday that it will phase out its pay phones in Illinois and 12 other states by the end of 2008.
While AT&T's decision doesn't mean the end of the pay phone -- independent firms still will offer the service -- public phones will become even more difficult to find.
Alcatel and Lucent Agree to Merge in $13.4 Billion Deal
Topic: Telecom Industry
6:27 pm EDT, Apr 2, 2006
Alcatel of France and Lucent Technologies said today that they had reached agreement on a $13.4 billion merger that would create a French-American maker of telecommunications equipment with revenue of $25 billion, 88,000 employees and phone company customers across the world.
Well, at least the downward spiral for these executives includes a few years in the city of lights, even if:
It is stultifying and dull and leads to a nation that dresses less like Catherine Deneuve in "Belle de Jour" and more like timid, provincial town hall employees.
The most famous single scene--one those who have seen it refer to again and again--involves something we do not see and do not even understand. A client has a small lacquered box. He opens it and shows its contents to one of the other girls, and then to Severine. We never learn what is in the box. A soft buzzing noise comes from it. The first girl refuses to do whatever the client has in mind. So does Severine, but the movie cuts in an enigmatic way, and a later scene leaves the possibility that something happened.
What's in the box? The literal truth doesn't matter. The symbolic truth, which is all Bunuel cares about, is that it contains something of great importance to the client.
In a major blow to Internet firms such as Amazon.com and Google, the House Energy and Commerce Committee expects to scrap plans for "network neutrality" safeguards in forthcoming telecommunications legislation, congressional and industry sources said. Instead, the panel would move a streamlined video franchising bill sought by AT&T and Verizon Communications, which are deploying video services that will compete with cable companies.
The November - December 2005 issue of the Cook Report looks at different forms of Broadband. It describes the regulatory-political victory of the Duopoly in the United States. It examines IMS and a carrier control mechanism and then outlines Duopoly’s coming and likely IMS oriented struggle with the Application Service Providers (Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon) for control of digital networks.
Here's an idea: Search IS social networking IS Search. Google is a SNS. Not Orkut -- the Google Google. Discuss.
SBC is in talks to buy AT&T for more than $16 billion.
A deal, if reached, would be the final chapter in the 120-year history of AT&T, the first technological giant of the modern age and the original model for telecommunications companies worldwide. A deal would be a reunion of sorts, putting back together some of the largest pieces of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly, which was broken up in 1984.
