Joi Ito's Web

Ray Plzak of ARIN pointed out during the board meeting that 45% of available addresses have been allocated to the RIR's (Regional Internet Registries). There are number of studies about how much longer we have before we run out of addresses. The estimates range from 10 years to 40 years of time left.

I'll write more about this later, but IPv6 seems to be moving forward, but the efficient reallocation of addresses and unanticipated technologies such as NATs (Network Address Translation) has taken the pressure off of IPv6 adoption from the "running out of addresses" perspective. However, IPv6 has many benefits, not just increased address space and we should move forward with adoption. I would also like to point out that the rumor that a single US university has more addresses than China is an urban myth. This was true in the past, but many universities and early Internet address users with large allocations have returned their address space and China has one of the largest address allocations today.

UPDATE: Hmm... This report seems to suggest that the allocation is a bit higher. Maybe I misheard. It appears that 45% of the addresses have NOT been assigned to the RIR's.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the Board Governance Committee's draft of the Core Principles and Corporate Governance Guidelines. Section 5(e) says "Having given the chief executive delegated authority, Board members should be careful – individually and collectively – not to undermine it by word or action." The idea behind this is that the board should not be undermining the activity of the CEO after it has delegated a task. As a CEO, I can understand this intention, but I believe that it should be decided operationally and should not be in a guidelines document to be signed by the board. In addition, I think the word "undermine" is vague. In many ways, the role of the board is to "undermine" management if management is not doing the right thing.

During the public forum (which is going on right now), Alejandro Pisanty, the chair of the committee, pointed out that there were a number of comments and that the committee is working on revising the draft. If you have comments, I suggest you submit them through the link above. There were a number of constructive comments from other participants during the forum and they will be posted on the site soon.

Photo by Nokia

Nokia

Art Meets State-of-the-Art: Exquisite Materials, Distinctive Details Unite to Create a Mobile Icon - the Nokia 8801

April 07, 2005

Exclusive audio accompaniment, including signature ringtone "Dharma", by award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto

Espoo, Finland - Drawing upon modern watchmaking and jewelry techniques, Nokia has unveiled a truly inspired mobile phone for today's connoisseurs of quality and taste. Encased in a slim stainless steel body, the Nokia 8801 subtly glides open to reveal a number of distinctive details, each meticulously considered and researched to complement the prestige and quality of the device. To heighten the experience, the Nokia 8801 features exclusive audio accompaniment, including all ring tones and alerts, by award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. This attention to detail continues Nokia's heritage of premium mobile phones that have set the industry standard for elegance and performance.

When Marko Ahtisaari approached me for an introduction to Ryuichi Sakamoto I didn't know what they wanted to do with him. Nokia and Ryuichi Sakamoto? Now I know. This is great. I want one! hint. hint...

April 07, 2005 08:01 AM US Eastern Time

Wikimedia Foundation Announces Corporate Support of Wikipedia from Yahoo! Search; Helps Allow the Organization to Run Wikipedia Independently

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. & SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 7, 2005--Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops and maintains free open content for the public, and Yahoo! Search, a leading global search engine, today announced that Yahoo! Search will dedicate hardware and resources to support Wikipedia, a community based encyclopedia written and edited by people from around the world. The contribution is the most significant dedication made to date to the Wikimedia Foundation by a corporate sponsor and is essential to furthering their global growth.

In addition, Wikipedia content will become available to hundreds of millions of users worldwide through Yahoo! Search via shortcuts that are automatically displayed above the relevant search results (http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/). Yahoo! will begin making Wikipedia content available via shortcuts in the U.S., select European, Asian, and Latin American properties over the next several weeks.

UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that I should make it clear that the "race" I was referring to was that Google had been widely rumored to be in talks with Wikipedia for sponsorship. Yahoo beat them in the race to close a deal with Wikipedia. Maybe it isn't a "race" but it's interesting in light of Yahoo one-upping Google on a variety of fronts these days.

UPDATE 2: Announcement on Wikimedia Foundation page.

VideoLAN, or VLC, is a cross-platform media player and is my media player of choice. It plays everything and I just love it. It would be hard to live without it.

VideoLAN page

The end draws near...

VideoLAN is seriously threatened by software patents due to the numerous patented techniques it implements and uses. Also threatened are the many libraries and projects which VLC is built upon, like FFmpeg, and the other fellow Free And Open Source software multimedia players, which include MPlayer, xine, Freevo, MythTV, gstreamer.

Multimedia is a patent minefield. All important techniques and formats are covered by broad and trivial patents that are harming progress and alternative implementations, such as free software multimedia players.

The European commission has just passed its directive on software patents, violating democratic rules and procedures to the sole benefit of big non-European corporation and Ireland and to the detriment of small and medium sized businesses (which comprise 99% of the European software industry) and free software.

The European parliament will now be taking the last stand against software patents in a voting for which an absolute majority is needed. Such a majority is hard to come by in a parliament with a low attendance level.

But not all is lost yet as long as you decide it is time to make a difference and take action. This is our last opportunity to fend off software patents worldwide, there will be no second chance for the foreseeable future.

Signing petitions will not suffice. Contact your local EU representatives and educate them why software patents are a bad idea in the first place and why they must attend that parliament session to vote against them. Make it clear that they need to stop the machinations of the EU council and reaffirm the power of the EU parliament, the only democratically elected EU institution. For in-depth information and starting points to get active visit the software patent page of the FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) and NoSoftwarePatents.com.

Wish us luck, we will need it.
VideoLAN - See the statistics

via ladi

My blog uses a "by/2.0" Creative Commons license. This means that anyone can use anything from my blog and copy or create derivative works without asking permission as long as they give me attribution. NEC has gotten into blogging and wanted to use the content from my blog. Unfortunately, I write mostly in English. I have tried translating posts myself as well as using a number of volunteer translators. The problem is, translation is not very fun and I would rather write another post in English than spend time translating. The combination of NEC's desire to use my content and my Creative Commons license allows NEC to pay a translator to translate my blog into Japanese and use the content on their blog. I don't get paid, but now my words are available in Japanese too.

NEC tells me that after a six month period, they will release the Japanese content under and Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.1/jp license which will allow me to copy the the translations back to my blog after this period.

Translations are essential for building bridges between cultures. One big problem is that translation sometimes cost MORE than the cost of writing the original work. It's also more boring. Using CC to allow people to create business models to pay translators seems like a great idea to me. Thanks NEC!

NEC's Japanese Joi Ito's Web

Cory @ Boing Boing Blog

Anti-Starbucks site doesn't use "Starbucks" in name

NPR sez, "'The Delocator' is a site that helps you find independent alternatives to Starbucks in your neighborhood. So why isn't it called the 'Starbucks Delocator'? Because the San Francisco Art Institute was too scared that Starbucks would come through with the corporate smack-down. Of course this renaming means the site won't show up in google when people search for 'Starbucks', and what's the point if people can't discover it? Carrie McLaren is out to change that: she's launched a google campaign to get people to link to it by its real name, the Starbucks Delocator. Take that chilling effects. Now, get your link on!"

Starbucks Delocator Link
(Thanks, NPR and Stay Free Daily!)

UPDATE: You can use a company name in the domain name of a non-commercial "sucks" site. via ICANNWatch

UPDATE 2: See also EFF Deep Links for information on the ruling.

I'm meeting some bloggers in Buenos Aires at 20:00 on April 8, 2005. Please take a look at the wiki for more information and sign up if you can come. See you there!

UPDATE: Señor Mariano

The ICANN meeting in Mar del Plata is just about to officially begin. There will be a webcast of the sessions in the main auditorium. There are some interesting issues on the agenda including DNS Security, Domain Name Hijacking and WSIS. Of course the public discussion and the board meeting should also be interesting. You can find the schedule on the web site.

WEBCAST AND REMOTE PARTICIPATION INFORMATION

ALL sessions in the main auditorium can be viewed at:
http://media.icann.org/ramgen/broadcast/argentina.rm.

ALL ccNSO sessions can be viewed at:
http://media.icann.org/ramgen/broadcast/ccnso.rm.

To send questions to the board of directors or if you have question or comments related to the meeting, please send an email to argentina@icann.org.

Cameo

Google & Firefox == Evil & Annoying

I recently did a search at google for "radio shack". To my surprise, I received a cookie setting request from radio shack.com. This had never happened before- and radio shack also happened to be a sponsored link. I did other searches, such as "ford", "sony", and even "girl scouts"- and each time, the top link requested a cookie to be set. Since Girl Scouts did not have a sponsored link- I realised it must only be the top link that sets a cookie. It turned out that Mozilla browsers (that includes firefox) and Google have both enabled prefetch- although it would seem that Google only recently enabled it- as this is a new occurrence. I always verify the setting of cookies- so this makes every google search into an annoying cookie refusal time waste. It would also seem that prefetching is turned on my default in firefox- and is very unintuitive to turn off.

So- for my friends that automatically accept cookies- you are now downloading a page and a cookie nearly every time you use google and firefox together.

And even though I never clicked on their link- and never wanted to visit their site- I'm downloading the top link of my search results to my harddrive every time I do a Google search.

This makes me dislike not only Mozilla- but Google as well.