rare pattern thoughts in a blog

There's something seriously wrong about this.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]

They arrived en masse some 90 minutes before the hearing began and occupied almost every available seat, upon which many promptly fell asleep (picture above).
MarkeyComcast’s sleeper cell

One told us that he was “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.”

>> Listen to the audio

He added that he had no idea what the meeting was about.

If he was holding someone else’s seat, he never gave it up.

Many of this early crowd had mysteriously matching yellow highlighters stuck in their lapels.

I can't say I'm a Ron Paul supporter, but this New York Times "analysis" by Julie Bosman of a Ron Paul television ad caught my eye as being a bit off the mark. Consider this:

The advertisement has a low-budget, unpolished feel, but that is unlikely to bother many of Mr. Paul’s supporters, who tend to be extremely devoted.

Let's pause right there. Ms. Bosman's assumption that only "devoted" supporters would appreciate a low-budget television ad strikes me as nuts, or at least naïve. I don't know anybody who likes the premasticated schmaltz sausages that pass for political commercials these days. They tell us nothing, really -- and are, in fact, some of the most tedious and boring crap (excuse me) on televison. If prescription drugs and iPods were sold like this, Pfizer and Apple would be out of business.

The advertisement accomplishes what the Paul campaign said was its modest goal: to introduce Mr. Paul to voters in that state, where he is emerging as a potential spoiler in the Republican primary.

Hmmm. Is he a "spoiler"? Considering that Paul raised $4 million online in 24 hours, he's already looking more viable than some of the other "contenders" out there, like -- what's his name? That actor guy that all the talk shows were buzzing about. The guy with the hang-dog expression. Oh yeah, he was too boring to remember.

For those of us paying attention, Clayton Christensen introduced the idea of the "disruptive" technology. Transistor radios, for example, hit the market by storm in 1965. Nobody saw it coming, except the Japanese. They were "competing against non-competition." Nobody was selling radios to teenagers -- or portable radios to anybody. Suddenly the Japanese were market players in consumer technology.

Disruptively financed Ron Paul is certainly starting to disrupt the political dialogue:

The war on terror and the growth of big government have had a dangerous side effect: the loss of privacy rights for the American people. Both parties have put their pet schemes ahead of our rights. Not me. As president, I won’t stand for it. No national ID card, no invasion of privacy.

This guy is running for president? Nobody else anywhere in the presidential race is "selling" this. He's competing against non-competition. That makes his increasing numbers ... disruptive ... to the status quo.

Hat tip to Seth, who's not endorsing Paul, but merely notes:

When you're trying to sell something new, particularly in a business to business setting, there are always people like Julie Bosman. They are the defenders of the status quo.

They have an important job to do: to point out to everyone the risks of change. To identify potential spoilers.

In the 1990s, Ross Perot competed against non-competition, and totally disrupted the presidential election. Call him a spoiler, but I don't think it's an accident that Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress took up his message and balanced the budget. Four years ago, Howard Dean was the disruptive candidate with online power.

In the end, Perot and Dean couldn't hold it together in the context of mainstream media message making. A lot has changed since then. The web is not on the margins anymore -- it's the new reality that all the mainstream media are focusing on. Just check the hot topics on Romanesko.

Is Ron Paul a "spoiler"? My feeling is that you won't learn much asking the pundits.

[Photo credit: Vince Brown]

The Department of Justice has weighed in against Net Neutrality:

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.

Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?

The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.

You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).

"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.

This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.

What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.

I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.

[via Cory Doctorow who nods to Lawrence Lessig.]

Still, the standard for net neutrality videos is set by the Ask a Ninja video embedded in this post.

Over recent years, we've seen how social media and "web 2.0" sites have changed how we use the internet. Now we're starting to see how we use the internet change how we think about and interact with non-internet things.

Take politics. If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you've seen how presidential candidates have implemented community-style websites as key parts of their campaigns. A quick glance at the BlogHer Politics & News blogs shows more and more posts relating to how the very fabric of campaigns is changing as candidates and their campaign staffs learn how to navigate the waters of the blogosphere.

The blogosphere isn't just covering the political challenges of the day -- it has become a big political challenge of the day.

Of course, this kind of thing isn't quite new. The disruptive nature of "web 2.0" has been the focus of forward-looking businesses for some time now. On SiteProNews, Kalena Jordan writes that social media is "The Instant Brand Killer":

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg (http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/198).

Users aren't the only fickle creatures. So are voters. Now, after working primarily the margins in prior years, we're seeing social media play a similarly disruptive role in politics -- especially presidential campaigns -- as it has in business, by taking control of the message away from the campaign managers and placing it into the hands of the people ... all of the people.

Whoops!

The mix between political and blogging communities can get rough, and the politicians aren't always coming off well. It doesn't seem like they were quite expecting that. What with the choice by several campaigns to make their announcements online first, rather than on network news or talk shows (or comedy shows), perhaps the campaigns didn't quite know what they were getting into -- especially with regards to the inevitable trolling and flare-ups that can happen in the political blogosphere ... or how some loud, well-financed political operatives can get at politicians who've committed themselves to listening.

As a result, DC insiders are already getting gun-shy when it comes to the internet. Get a kick out of this post from Liza at culturekitchen:

I was told by a party insider they could not link to this blog because I used the word "panties" in one of my posts.

Yes people. Like 9 year-olds, Democrats are skittish of the word used for a girls' cootie catcher.

Do I have to be a multi-millinaire political socialite or a couple of guys dressed in blog drag for it to be acceptable? What of the DNC linking to the aforementioned blog back in 2004 when it had a media dilettante who's shitck at said blog was to endlessly pepper her posts with sodomy jokes?

Does choosing not to link to this blog have something to do with common decency or is it just out right censorship?

What will happen to the American political culture that has been safely ensconced in the one-way announce-only paradigm of the mainstream media, as it continues to interact with a voting populace that has platforms to talk back? It's already proving a volatile mix.

And we're only just getting started in this campaign.

Recently, Lynn d Johnson wrote about a new political website, techPresident:

The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook.

Our team of bloggers is made of veterans of the 2004 and 2006 elections, ranging across the political spectrum. Their expertise covers everything from website design to the latest in mobile tools and social networking sites. And we'll look closely not just at what the campaigns are or are not doing, but what voters and activists are doing online to independently affect the election.

One sample:

Marianne Richmond at Blog the Campaign in 08 takes a look at the blog on Hillary Clinton's site and find something missing: Hillary.

Mitt Romney is trying his best to replicate Barack Obama's Facebook popularity. However, the University of Arizona's student paper, the Wildcat, points out: "Of the 36 posted photos of Romney's life and campaign, he seems to only interact with white people. (Note to the Romney 2008 campaign: These things can be both an asset and a liability.)"

It will be interesting indeed to see how the carefully managed, massaged, powdered and spun presidential campaigns fare in the wild and wooly world of social media, where you don't need to buy expensive airtime to be heard, where spin from ads and corporate media has limited effect, and where news can spread like wildfire.

If we are now the machine, which candidate will we choose before the election even takes place?

[Cross-posted on BlogHer.]

...and by choice I used paper. Maybe I know too much about computers to trust them for elections.

Warning: Spoilers

After last night's season 3 opener, I'm a little concerned about my favorite show on television, "Battlestar Galactica." The show is starting to resemble "Lost," which from my perspective is not at all an improvement.

I'm not just talkling about the tents and stress monkeys in the jungle. It's the whole arbitrariness that comes across in sequence after sequence of surprises with very little tension. The show used to be terrific at building tension. Whether it's seizing the ore on a hostile asteroid or finding water or holding red alert for several days while Cylons continue to find the fleet within 33 minutes of arriving anywhere or two strong military commanders poised to take their ships into full battle against each other, the show built great anticipation of what was going to happen next.

Now we get surprises, not suspense. This happens, then this happens, then this happens. We see very little planning and feel very little of what the characters want -- which is very un-Battlestar Galactica. The show had been great at portraying all sorts of fascinating, complicated characters, which made for messing up the clean Good Guys/Bad Guys kinds of delineations that can make such shows boring. No, you found yourself sympathizing with a villain at times, disliking a hero at times -- because these were people. Even some of the Cylons were interesting people.

The Cylons have gotten boring now. Now, except for the Sharons and the now-deceased-soon-to-be-resurrected Caprica Six, they're one-dimensional Nazi caricatures. They're not even interesting interacting with each other, which strikes me as a missed opportunity.

Baltar is getting interesting again, though. (There's one villain who can be sympathetic.) I find myself wondering what he's going to do, now that he's gone and signed the death warrants of just about all of the rest of the cast.

On the upside, though, the performances are very good, despite the dull script. Oddly, it's the special guest stars who are most disappointing. Lucy Lawless' Number Three is truly despicable without really doing anything, which speaks to her talent as an actress, and Dean Stockwell is his usual charismatic self on screen, but his role is rather one-note as Cylon grand inquisitor, and Lucy has little to do but sneer at people. Here are these big stars, at least for the scifi/fantasy television realm, and they just don't seem to have much to do besides act as plot points and scenery.

Ultimately, though, what really bothers me is all this time spent on "New Caprica." Sorry, but just because "Lost" does the tent city thing doesn't mean Battlestar should emulate it.

Please, Ron Moore! It's not "Tent City Galactica"!

I'm not sure about this turn in the Starbuck storyline, either. Her love affair with the sports star was pretty boring, yes, but this mommy-prison stuff with the Cylon who has the creep sweats is on the dull side, too. Starbuck needs to move. Let her move! (Read IGN's Katie Sackhoff interview.)

I just hope Adama can mount a rescue and save the show. The first two seasons, which are now out on DVD, get better and better with each viewing. Galactica doesn't need to go back to the Twelve Colonies, but in my view the show needs to go back to its home, in space, in fascinating characters, searching for Earth.

For some other takes:

DougMcHone at CoffeeSwirls had his first viewing of the show:

So I sat down and expected some space battles, some intrigue, something entertaining. What I got was a heavily politicized show, with the Cylons being seen as an occupying force and the humans seen as the heroic insurgency. There was talk of torture and rape against the insurgents and the Cylons said that they just wanted the humans to accept their way of life so everything could be better for all parties.

He blames "the liberal media." For more amusingly silly political takes, there are PostWatch's outrage at DCBlues' equally silly take on the new season, and Devilstower's interpretation that Americans are Cylons. Really, in this day and age of cracking the human genome, if there's a "bigger message" to take away from Battlestar Galactica, it's the question of what makes us human (though I confess that the torture that's been used in many episodes throughout the show, by heroes and villains alike, has proven to be rather timely, alas). As for New Caprica standing in for Iraq -- sorry, I just don't see it. But if you look at the posts out there, there seems to be a lot of political angst about his show. It's a political season, I guess.

Update: Galactica is really back now.

[Flash video would not cache. Follow link below.]

More info here [Warning: This is one of those all-Flash "web 1.0-style" websites that starts talking at you by default as soon as the page loads, so you might want to turn down your speakers. Enjoy the cheese.]

Via Jeffrey Zeldman.

["Net Neutrality San Jose", posted by jimiinc]

The news is not reassuring for anyone who counts on unrestricted and uncensored access to the internet.

Despite the flurry of phone calls, emails, videos and pleas from a wide base of passionate pro-Net Neutrality constituents, representing hundreds of thousands of people from all political persuasions and hundreds of consumer groups, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives crushed an amendment to safeguard an equal opportunity Internet.

After just 20 minutes of debate on the House floor, Rep. Ed Markey's proposed amendment to the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), which subsequently passed without Net Neutrality provisions, was rejected by a vote of 269-152. While the voting appears to be largely partisan, with only 11 Republicans voting in favor of the amendment and a surprising 58 Democrats voting against, Net Neutrality, in its short time in the public eye, is an apolitical issue.

I think what jmiller means is that it has been a non-partisan issue, at least when it comes to the grassroots support of "net neutrality." He doesn't mince words:

But Congressional leadership was largely unconvinced by an idea embraced by a diverse list of organizations that would typically be swinging the political pendulum at each others' faces. Think MoveOn and the Christian Coalition. Think the American Civil Liberties Union and the Gun Owners of America. Think Parents Television Council and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Add their support to the very founders of the medium as Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee stand beside unlikely cohorts Moby and Alyssa Milano.

Even with a constituency like that, whose sudden unity should sound with exponential resonance within the ears of those who represent them, the US House of Representatives ignored it by siding with telecommunications and cable duopolistic entities. The ears of a dinosaur are difficult to reach, but his carrion is easy enough to see - it leaves droplets of green behind it.

Of course, the uproar over "net neutrality" has been largely restricted to the realm of lobbyists and (/vs.?) bloggers.

The mainstream media, especially television and talk radio, which will discuss something as benign as Brangelina's baby or something as polarizing as immigration reform, have been conspicuously silent on the matter, which may account for why the public seems largely unaware of it, as well as the apparent deafness of our representatives.

--Which only goes to show the importance of the internet.

Pamela Heywood on 7c marketing has a news rundown on the "net neutrality" nixing.

jules at tech whisperer looks at the technological trends, including something called IP Multimedia Subsystems ("IMS"), and worries:

IMS isn't about convered services. IMS is about POLICY CONTROL. All those neat little features are just disguising the real impetus behind the technology. Once the network knows who you are and what your bits are doing, they can enforce user policies on what your bits are and what you can do with those bits. That is not cool. Full stop.

I used to be a die hard anti-net-neutrality chick. Now, not so much. I have taken the green pill, and we HAVE to have net neutrality. IMS is going to put entirely too much power into the network. Yikes.

Meanwhile, on AfterSlash, pyza considers the implications:

If there is enough bandwidth then everyone’s traffic will get through regardless of Net Neutrality. If there is congestion though, without Net Neutrality only traffic from sites that paid the extortion fee will get through.

Does this not lead to a situation where it is ideal for an ISP to maintain a certain level of congestion at all times in order to ensure that there exists a reason to pay the extortion fee?

One the other hand with Net Neutrality in place it’s in the ISP’s best interest to maintain an adequate level of bandwidth to make sure everyone’s traffic gets through.

zittiblog is more blunt:

I know most of my fam reading this are proud republicans, which I once was, but it is stuff like this that is totally setting me off!! I still consider myself generally conservative for the record, but anyone who thinks it’s cool that political parties vote right down party lines on issues like this is crazy. It is total crap that anyone looking out for consumers and the good of the internet would vote against net neutrality (see the article). Thank you republicans for paving the way away from a free internet owned by the people to a corporate dominated, paid internet.

You can basically bet that any large website that offers free content will require a paid subscription since they are going to have pay telecoms large amounts for the use of bandwidth, THE SAME INTERNET BANDWIDTH YOU AND I ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR EVERY MONTH WITH YOUR INTERNET SERVICE BILL!!

Kim Krause Berg calls this The Day the Wild, Carefree and Sexy Internet Died:

The gist of the new age of the Internet is that people will no longer have as many choices or even a say about how we get the Internet, or what we get from our ISP's. Everything has been threatened by greed, and we knew that would happen. Eventually.

Now it's here. Some people say that now, what I'm able to get from the Internet may be up to how much I can afford to pay for, or who my Internet provider is and what sites and services they intend on letting me have access to.

I wonder how long this control will last.

Website Services Magazine quotes a "net neutrality" opponent:

Peter Suderman, technology analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute had this to say, "A market in which Internet service providers aren’t allowed to prioritize the content traveling over their networks is one with less innovation and fewer benefits for everyone involved."

That's exactly the point, though -- Why should ISPs decide what you can and cannot see?

Roger Strukhoff asks, Is God on the Side of Net Neutrality?

Now the Christian Coalition of America, headed by well-known religious commentator and political candidate Pat Robertson, has jumped into the pool. A letter from the organization, addressed to U.S. House of Representatives Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) requests that he support "Net Neutrality legislation (that wlll) prevent the large phone and cable companies from discriminating against web sites." The letter cites pending legislation that addresses both sides of the issue, and states that the Coalition is "committed to working on behalf of our supporters to ensure that the Internet remains the free marketplace of ideas, products and services that It is today."

At issue specifically is a bill known as HR 5252, in which the Christian Coalition claims "there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they do not support. One of our concerns is this: What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, broadband service providers could block, impair, or otherwise limit access to a pro-life website, harming their ability to communicate."

This almost sounds like the work of Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

[Cross-posted on BlogHer.]

It's not very often that you see MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Gun Owners of America, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Library Association, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist on the same side of the political fences. (Where's the ninja? Read on....)

Today was a small victory:

The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ — a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, “the First Amendment of the Internet.”

20 members of the Commitee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.

Today’s vote would have been unthinkable three weeks ago.

There's been some skepticism expressed here about "net neutrality." I hate to disagree with PHAT Mommy, but I don't really see how, by passing "net neutrality,"

Congress could actually hinder the development of new and exciting Internet technologies that we are not even aware of yet. Not to mention pave the way for {shudder} taxation.

As someone who works in what I, at least, consider very exciting new internet technologies, I consider the traditional neutrality of the internet as nothing but a help ... and certainly don't see how "net neutrality" is a gateway to taxation. Congress has refrained from taxing the neutral internet so far. If Congress wants to tax, it will tax. I see that as a separate issue.

The biggest opposition to "net neutrality" is organized under Hands Off the Internet, whose flagship members include the big telcos and cellular companies who want to be able to sell exclusive rights to your eyeballs. I'm much to decided on this issue to present their arguments, so I leave it to them to explain.

For what I think is the most amusing explanation of what "net neutrality" is about, Ask a Ninja!....

[Found via Table of Malcontents.]

For a more scholarly take, on MIT's website, timble offers some historical perspective:

Twenty-seven years ago, the inventors of the Internet[1] designed an architecture[2] which was simple and general. Any computer could send a packet to any other computer. The network did not look inside packets. It is the cleanness of that design, and the strict independence of the layers, which allowed the Internet to grow and be useful. It allowed the hardware and transmission technology supporting the Internet to evolve through a thousandfold increase in speed, yet still run the same applications. It allowed new Internet applications to be introduced and to evolve independently.

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone's permission. [3]. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.

It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing. We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me.

...

1. Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn and colleagues
2. TCP and IP
3. I did have to ask for port 80 for HTTP

In another Save the Internet blog post today, tkarr writes:

Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott [no relation] testified before the Senate to day on behalf of SavetheInternet.com coalition members Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America. This from his statement:

Civic engagement on network neutrality represents the most diverse public response to a communications policy issues in recent history. A grassroots effort led by the “Save the Internet” Coalition (www.savetheinternet.com) includes nearly 700 organizations, from small community groups to large national organizations. Banded together in this coalition are the Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority, Parents Television Council, American Library Association, Consumers Union, and Educause. Network Neutrality is also supported by AARP, the ACLU, the Christian Coalition and the National Religious Broadcasters.

More than 700,000 individuals have signed a petition to Congress demanding Internet freedom through meaningful Network Neutrality. Thousands of bloggers of all political stripes and interests, from Daily Kos and Instapundit to video gamers, musicians and educators, have championed the issue and encouraged public involvement in the campaign. The world’s most renowned experts on Internet technology, law, and policy have written prominently on the issue. This massive civic coalition stands next to a similarly large and unprecedented coalition in the commercial sector, joining together the Internet content and technology industries. Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, eBay, are joined by hundreds of smaller online retailers and technology firms. The campaign to preserve Network Neutrality protections is perhaps the most diverse set of public and private interests backing any single issue in Washington today.

Scott urged the Senators on the Commerce Committee to support Sens. Snowe and Dorgan’s “Internet Freedom Preservation Act.” Scott concluded:

The choice before the Committee is clear: allow consumers through an unfettered online marketplace to decide which businesses succeed or fail; or allow the dominant telephone and cable duopoly to use its marketplace power to exclude the entrepreneurs who offer consumers affordable and innovative communications products and services. We urge you to adopt the former direction. The future of the Internet, the health of the communications marketplace and the well-being of consumers depends on it.

Read Scott’s full statement here.

--

Also posted on BlogHer.