Latest Updates from The Tweney Review for June 12, 2006
dyl...@gmail.com
http://dylan.tweney.com/
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5 problems with "net neutrality."
http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/09/5-problems-with-net-neutrality/
1. It's a complicated issue. A really complicated technical issue. The
simplistic rhetoric of "demanding that ISPs treat all traffic equally"
is a nonstarter, because ISPs have never done that. Peering
arrangements, cacheing networks like Akamai, even the fact that you can
get slow DSL for an average of $38/month or faster cable service for
$41 or a really fast T1 for $250 all point to tons of variation in the
way that Net traffic is handled, charged for, optimized, and delivered.
Until you understand how this works you can't even talk intelligently
about net neutrality. ...
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Democracy.
http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/09/democracy/
The free Democracy Player from the Participatory Culture Foundation is
a slick tool for finding and downloading Internet videos. Unlike, say,
YouTube, you don't have to sit around and wait for a semi-crappy video
to buffer before you watch it. Instead, you browse through single
videos or channels that look interesting, mark them for downloading,
and then come back later after the downloading's done.
The videos are high quality, with high framerates and enough resolution
that they look good in fullscreen playback (which Democracy supports).
Unfortunately the software's still beta, so it's buggy -- it can run
slowly, and crashes ...
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Are microformats just bad metadata?
http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/07/are-microformats-just-bad-metadata/
I'm at risk of getting a reputation for pissing on Web 2.0, but here
goes. The problem with "microformats," which Technorati is pushing
pretty hard, is that they seem to be no more than poorly implemented
metadata standards.
Take the rel=tag specification, for instance. This is a snippet of code
you can add to a hyperlink that tells sites, like Technorati, that the
page where the link appears should be categorized a certain way.
In other words, you're tagging the current page (where the link
appears) by linking it to a tag page (which presumably collects many
similarly-tagged pages). The meaning ...
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Nintendo DS outstrips Sony PSP.
http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/06/nintendo-ds-outstrips-sony-psp/
Despite being a far inferior piece of hardware, the Nintendo DS
continues to outsell the Sony PSP by a factor of 6. The PSP has a
bigger, more beautiful screen. It's got more sophisticated controls. It
supports removable memory cards and works pretty decently as a video
and audio player. And its graphics kick the Nintendo DS's chunky
90s-era pixelvision into the gutter. When we reviewed the two platforms
a year ago in Mobile, it was obvious which was the better choice. The
PSP was revolutionary, cutting-edge, and inspiringly designed. The DS,
by contrast, was a clunky, unlovely package of ...
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Princeton Tec Scout headlamp.
http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/06/princeton-tec-scout-headlamp/
Princeton Tec's Scout headlamp ($22) has 2 white LEDs and three
brightness settings: bright, very bright, and blinding. It's easily the
most powerful LED headlamp I've tested. The plastic clip on the back
holds the light to a hat brim nicely, but it broke off when I tried to
wedge it around a particularly fat object (my bike's handlebars). The
stretchy headstrap still works, though, if I feel like turning myself
into a bionic Bjorn Borg.
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Dylan Tweney
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