I hate to introduce a depressing note to this blog (OK, I lie, sometimes I enjoy stirring things up), but Lawrence Lessig has a post on his blog about home broadband prices in Japan:

So the price war for broadband continues here in Japan... NTT now offers 12 mbs for about $20/month. And 100 mbs (fiber) for $46/month. According to LowerMyBills.com, I can get 1.5 mbs for $50/month in San Francisco. Where is war when you need it?

Where indeed, we mutter as we weep into our pints here in Dublin, paying circa $100 monthly for 512kbs... in the few places we can get it... 

11:11:03 PM  #   your two cents []

Boing Boing Blog links to Deborah Marquit's online shop that sells couture lingerie dyed with flourescent dyes (so you glow under a blacklight).  Kind of tempts you to walk around at night in front of the windows, just to freak out the neighbours... Link
9:39:23 PM  #   your two cents []

IEDR Update: The dispute between the IEDR's chief executive Mike Fagan and the IEDR's Board of Directors has moved out of court today after the judge encouraged the parties to meet with an arbitrator to come up with an out of court settlement.
4:25:11 PM  #   your two cents []

Web Searches Take Cultural Pulse. Google, Lycos and other search sites have unleashed lists of the year's top search terms, which many say are an accurate barometer of cultural fads, fears and obsessions.  [Wired News]
3:29:14 PM  #   your two cents []

NY Times: Harvard Advertises for People Abducted by Aliens. [Scripting News]
3:27:32 PM  #   your two cents []

I really liked Media Unspun, the irreverent daily column on the way the media was spinning a particular business story or two. It was edited by Jimmy Guterman along with others who wrote the Industry Standard's online Media Grok column, one of the few of all those emailed newsletters churned out at the height of the dotcom boom that I regularly read and more importantly, enjoyed and found insightful. Sadly, Media Unspun has just shuttered its operations (on Friday 13th...), though Guterman will have a column in Business 2.0. Cyberjournalist.net has a recent interview with Guterman. I'm sorry they couldn't make a go of a subscription service -- I was glad to sign up and pay for it when it started as a sort of rebirth of Media Grok, and hope they might rise from the (un!)dead yet again at some future point.

1:47:42 PM  #   your two cents []

There's a fairly bland report in the Times today [subscription only] of yesterday's court hearing on the anti-dismissal case brought by former IEDR (Irish national domain registry, .ie) CEO Mike Fagan. Probably the most interesting detail is the one I also noted yesterday, that he had two legal identities and tax numbers:

Mr Patrick Hanratty SC, for the company, said it had discovered Mr Fagan had a "dual identity", with two different names, two different dates of birth and two different PPS numbers.

He said Mr Fagan had said on affidavit that a James Joseph Fagan was the same person as Michael Fagan and a PPS number in the name of James Joseph Fagan was Michael Fagan's number.

Mr Hanratty said the KPMG report was a very preliminary part of an investigation, and it had yet to be decided if it would lead to a disciplinary inquiry. It appeared likely now that the KPMG report would lead to allegations being finalised which would then be put to Mr Fagan.

The case continues today. It might be noted that Fagan's previous jobs were senior accountancy positions, so he should be quite familiar with legal and illegal tax situations.

1:22:57 PM  #   your two cents []

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggests that the only person who fits the bill as a possible Democratic candidate for the US presidency is Tony Blair:

Right now there is only one Democrat who could live up to all these rules: the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Maybe the Democrats should give him a green card. He's tough on national security, he has an alternative global vision, people like him and he is a beautiful, reassuring speaker. He's Bill Clinton without baggage. I'd say he's a natural.

Well! Most British people would hardly consider Blair 'without baggage' -- especially now, when the PM's family and finances have been the source of ongoing scandal. And 'people like him'? Er: Mr Friedman, Labour is polling at its lowest since they came into power, for reasons closely linked to Blair's leadership. You mean: Americans like him for his pro-US support -- which is, of course, at the center of much current negative British feeling towards their PM.

11:06:32 AM  #   your two cents []

AOL has secured a patent on instant messaging software which -- if it chooses to exercise it aggressively -- could seriously alter the IM landscape.
10:40:24 AM  #   your two cents []

Thomas Carlyle. "What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." [Quotes of the Day]
10:36:02 AM  #   your two cents []

Compromised in a Flash. A flaw found in Macromedia's Web animation software leaves Web surfers vulnerable to attack when they visit an Internet site or, possibly, open an e-mail. [CNET News.com]
10:31:41 AM  #   your two cents []

German Man Arrested in a Case of Homicide and Cannibalism. German prosecutors arrested a man in a ghoulish case that involved the Internet, homicide and cannibalism. [New York Times: Technology]
10:30:41 AM  #   your two cents []

Watch out for angry librarians! The Shifted Librarian points to a site with five 'technically legal signs' for librarians to post in their libraries if they're sick and tired of the US government's new citizen surveillance laws.

12:37:37 AM  #   your two cents []

From a fascinating piece on economics and (anti-)globalisation, by 1998 Nobel economics laureate, Amartya Sen:

The [anti-globalisation] protest movements are often ungainly, ill-tempered, simplistic, frenzied and frantic, and they can also be highly disruptive. And yet, at another level, they also serve the function, I would argue, of questioning and disputing the unexamined contentment about the world in which we live. 

In this sense, the global doubts can help to broaden our attention and extend the reach of policy debates, by confronting the status quo and by contesting global resignation and acquiescence. That, it can argued, is a creative role of doubts, even if some of the presumptions and many of the proposed remedies that go with the protest movements are themselves under examined and unclear. 

It is important to recognise that the question-mongering role of doubts can itself be creative and productive, and we have to separate the disruptive parts of the protest movements from their constructive function.

12:12:47 AM  #   your two cents []