Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I’m very happy to hear that Ted agrees with me on personal identity management.  I do disagree, somewhat, with his view that identity must be wrapped in a centralized trust model.  It seems to me that there are a myriad of ways which you could assert identity based on relationships we already have: banks, churches, lawyers, etc.  I know it’s not necessary to provide a guarantor to get a passport in the US, but it is in Canada.  In fact, if you’re living abroad, you have to provide two in order to get a passport, and they have to be people who have known you for a minimum of two years and who come from a limited number of backgrounds / professions. Why couldn’t I visit a notary, provide some verifiable credentials and be issued a certificate? Surely a decentralized model, based on the trust relationships that already exist in society could be just as workable.

Bloviating, eh Ted?  Oi!

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source

blo·vi·ate   (blō’vÄ“-āt’)  Pronunciation Key      intr.v.   blo·vi·at·ed, blo·vi·at·ing, blo·vi·ates Slang To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner: “the rural Babbitt who bloviates about ‘progress’ and ‘growth’” (George Rebeck).

Sorry Om!  I don’t think you’re geeky enough to be Spidey… me on the other hand…

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 90% Superman 70% Green Lantern 70% Iron Man 70% Hulk 65% Supergirl 63% Catwoman 55% Batman 50% Robin 50% Wonder Woman 28% The Flash 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Brough Turner’s Why there’s no Internet QoS and likely never will be is a great explanation of where the bottlenecks in the Internet are.  Well worth the read.

As I read this, I found myself wondering whether the whole net neutrality debate might in fact turn out to be nothing more than a distraction in the end.  The network operators all want high bandwidth to the home in order to deliver media.  Perhaps VoIP will end up being simply carried with it.

Mashable has a short piece on the significance of the unedited Saddam Hussein execution video which has leaked onto the internet.  Cashmore writes:

what’s becoming abundantly clear is that information can no longer be suppressed - with cameraphones, video-sharing sites and thousands of independent bloggers, not to mention the social filters and rating systems that help us find the most interesting content, this media will always become available online.

This is not, in fact, a new phenomenon.  Ogrish.com always carried unedited video clips that the mainstream press was too squeamish to air.  Successor site Liveleak.com has continued.  The only real difference, now, is the ready availability of much higher quality cameras in small form factors.