“Google controls 6% of all Internet traffic” and other links…
appfrica.net: “Only 150 networks control over 50% of all online traffic. This, in comparison with 5 years ago, when traffic was democratized among thousands and thousands of providers. And of course, Google has a lion’s share, at 6% of all Internet traffic, much of it coming from its popular property YouTube. ReadWriteWeb reports that over the past two years, larger networks, have been buying up smaller networks. Today, around 30 companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Facebook account for about 30% of all Internet traffic…” Whosoever wanted to live though the history of transition between the Articles of Confederation and The Constitution, your opportunity is here. When the appointed voices advocate for “the cloud,” these people worship the family of multi-national corporate gods that will eventually rule over the mediation of all “relevant” conversations on the face of the earth. It’s not about neo-Nazi; it’s about neo-Stasi.
“Why won’t Apple let indies create their own iTunes LPs?”
ITworld: “Of course, as you’d find out if you clicked on that iTunes link, they hadn’t; in fact, as became clear this weekend, they weren’t going to anytime soon, because indie labels have been shut out of the iTunes LP marketplace for now. Chocolate Lab Records, a Chicago-based indie label, reportedly contacted Apple about getting iTunes LP albums up for their artists, and was told that only the majors are being considered, and they’d have to pay $10,000 for design costs. The Mountain Goats are on 4AD—a pretty big-sized label as indies go, but not big enough to shell out ten grand for each iTunes LP design.”
“IBM senior vice-president Bob Moffat is guilty of insider trading”?
I, Cringely: “I have no idea whether IBM senior vice-president Bob Moffat is guilty of insider trading or not, though that’s what he was arrested for yesterday. What I do know is that Moffat’s job since 2005 has been as the architect of IBM’s project called LEAN, which is intended to adjust Big Blue’s global labor force to maximize profitability. I’ve written quite a bit about LEAN, much to the consternation of IBM, characterizing it in large part as a way to replace expensive older American workers with younger and cheaper workers in India and Argentina while cleverly dodging U.S. age discrimination and possibly other civil rights laws. Whatever the legality of LEAN it is downright mean and shows little respect for the people who made IBM what it is today.”
Mozilla Endorses SharePoint Competitor MindTouch
MindTouch: “Mozilla has asked MindTouch to convert the Mozilla Developer Center (MDC) from Mediawiki to Deki Wiki. I’m bringing this up in this post about localization with good reason. MDC is currently localized for 14 countries. We plan to launch the new and improved MDC in February. We don’t want to regress MDC and we need more languages. The guys at Mozilla are reaching out to Mozilla community for translators to help with this. If any of you Gardeners are capable of assisting in translating to any of the languages we currently lack for the MDC launch please consider lending a hand in this endeavor.”