Its not often a fairly erudite explanation of arcane radio frequency physics makes me laugh, (lets face it, I don't understand the physics and its NOT my idea of a good read) but this piece from David Weinberger on SATN seems to be getting at someone.

In the meantime what he seems to be suggesting to me is that if wireless network regulators and system designers were prepared to do sufficiently careful calculations and made the right kind of choices, there would be nothing to "interfere:" with the development of very low cost, ubiquitous, high speed wireless Internet access.

And that makes me SMILE HUGELY

I want a Bookmarklet that runs in Opera which I use when I am viewing a web page that I want to blog.

All I have to do is select the text on the screen and launch the Bookmarklet which:

• Opens my LiveJournal client from the system tray
• picks up the page title and turns it into a hot link using
• the URL in the address bar
• Copies the selected text and pastes the both into the client inside a blockquote.

So why are we so good at the other?

Nature Magazine has the results of an experiment done in Germany on the benefits and costs of altruism and threats when establishing and maintaining relationships.

Until now, scientists and economists have assumed that we help or punish others only when it benefits us. But in the real world there's a wealth of evidence to the contrary. We regularly reward people whom we may never see again, in tipping waiters, say; and we risk sacrificing ourselves to punish others - fighting those who verbally abuse us, for instance.

This mismatch between hypothesis and reality arose because customs - such as legally binding contracts, handshakes and marriage vows - make it difficult to study how and why people trust and betray each other. To get past these trappings, Fehr went to a university canteen with his colleague Bettina Rockenbach of the University of Erfurt, Germany.
[...]
Where punishment was threatened, investors got the least cash back. In the absence of punishment, investors saw a favourable return on their money. But where punishment was an option but was not used, trustees rewarded investors most handsomely.

Meanwhile KMSB.com reports on research into the difference between revenge and retaliation, and how dumb animals are too smart to hold a grudge

Neocortical prowess also allows humans to dehumanize their enemies and manipulate their emotional states, says Dr. Roscoe. Warriors, for example, can whip themselves into an angered frenzy by recalling slain kin and engaging in repetitive, war-mongering chants.

But if tribal warriors sometimes use their intelligence to incite war, evidence shows they also use it in ways to forestall aggression and set limits on reciprocal violence.

Dr. Beckerman, of Penn State, notes that tribes in many places develop elaborate rules outlining who, where, when and how revenge may be carried out. Kin, for example, are forbidden to retaliate against each other.

"The general rule is that you are prohibited from taking blood revenge on those who would be obliged to avenge you, if you were killed," Dr. Beckerman says.

Groups with ongoing relations – such as different clans within the same tribe or different villages within the same precinct – often share ideas on what kind of injury calls for blood revenge, who should carry it out and who the acceptable target of revenge ought to be, he says.

And reciprocity, the same relational rationalization used to return violence for violence, is sometimes used to build truces and contain unbridled violence. Food, labor, wives and other goods are often traded among members of tribes or between groups in attempts to keep losses and gains in balance or to bring an end to bloodshed.

"A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was not, for the tribal people who codified this rule, a recipe for unbridled violence, but rather an attempt to contain it," Dr. Beckerman says.

All of which may explain a little more about why the Internet, which has steadfastly refused to bow to commercial pressures and thrives on the gift economy, has also been instrumental in enabling the huge global peace movement that has sprung from nowhere in the last year.

This process is just at the beginning, we are getting some good ideas about the positive sides of it, now we have to start working on figuring out how we apply on a global scale "The general rule that you are prohibited from taking blood revenge on those who would be obliged to avenge you, if you were killed".

Lots to do, plenty of pressure.

While the Telcos are busy wondering where the hell their business model went, and how they are ever going to get us to pay ever higher rates for broadband to pay of those debts, the news just goes on getting worse.

This. Free Wireless on Newbury Street
A computer reseller in Boston is spearheading a new form of
"philanthropic advertising" that offers free wireless Internet access to the local community, with subtle branding.

This: In a further sign of the spread of wireless Internet technology, McDonald's restaurants in three U.S. cities will offer one hour of free high-speed access to anyone who buys a combination meal.

And this: Wi-fi chips make their debut must make really sad reading for the bean counters with the fibre optic networks and the massive 3G albatrosses hung round their necks.

The road to oblivion for the Old Economy Telcos beckons very clearly, and it will not get better till it gets very much worse. Guess I can write off the Telstra Shares after all.