James Kempf and Rob Austein: The Rise of the Middle and the Future of End to End: Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet Architecture. "Because an ISP delivers a commodity service, the profit margins on basic bandwidth provision for a best effort service bit pipe, together with the email and Web access services that are typically bundled with bit pipe service, are fairly low." OTOH, providing pure IP connectivity can itself be a source of differentiation if no one else offers it. [Hack the Planet]

Note the last sentence.  When "Internet access" eventually comes to mean "first class access to the crappy content we want to sell you and second-class crippled access to everything else," I will gladly pay more for "pure IP connectivity."  No email address, no customized home page -- just some static IPs and an SLA.  (See Speakeasy's "No Blocking" pledge for a glimpse of the future.)

4:44:36 PM   

Ooooh ooooh hot product alert. According to Gordon Mohr, Sony is coming out with a 20GB hand-held WiFi file server. Think about it. Hehe. Hey that's awesome. [Scripting News]

Don't buy one until you can discern what sort of DRM is built in.  There's no doubt in my mind we'll carry around hundreds of megabytes of wireless storage in the future.  But I won't be carrying around anything that limits my freedom to use digital media in all the ways the Constitution guarantees.

As ad-hoc local file sharing (a-la Rendevouz) permeates our cars, homes, offices, stores and public gathering places, carrying a portable file server begins to have real value.  That value disappears, however, if the use of that stored media is tied to a cumbersome crypto infrastructure (for DRM purposes).  DRM nullifies the network effect.

4:05:39 PM