"ZDNet is running a story on what a lot of us already know: Linux IS cheaper than Windows. This not because it is free. It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts."

"Imagine this. It's the year 2010, and almost everyone has a real-time always-on connection to the Net via ubiquitous wearable 'augmented reality' devices. As part of this package, made possible with advance minuturized heads-up displays, video cameras, location aware devices, GPS, swarmbots, emotion-sensitive and adaptive algorithms (i.e. Affective Computing), and sophisticated reputation systems, you are able to surf an augmented version of reality itself in real time.

Lets break this down. You would be able to, in real-time see precisely whats going on anywhere in the globe by jacking in to the collection of real-time video blogs. As part of this collection, sophisticated 3-D rendering engines would be able to take the collective video footage and extropolate a real-time VR scene, allowing you to transcend the viewing angle of any single camera. Better still, you could jack in to that part of the world from a variety of, not only physical perspectives, but political, intellectual, and emotional as well based on whatever any individual user makes public as part their unique sliding-scale trust system such as the type that Joi Ito has proposed with moblogs. All of this meta-data would form its own collective smart-mob based on individually selected criteria.

What this means is that you could then view the "scene" from virtually any angle. Imagine the possibility here. Some spontaneous news event occurs, and almost instantly as hundreds of people appear on the scene with wearable video cameras broadcasting on the net, you would be able to view this real-time scene from any angle, while simultaneously gaining the collective emotional assesment of the situation from those people choosing to broadcast their emotional indices, as well as the blogging that will invariable start occuring at rapid pace from your customized reputation/trust criteria.

All of this combines to gives you a real-time augmented, yet customized view of real-time reality. One that is rich in social and emotional context, providing and extending intimacy by empowering you to feel and touch the whole world."

"I think as wireless, wearable internet access become ubiquitous, we are going to see consumer power re-assert itself in an unprecedented way. Imagine for example, CueCat (a technology previously with little purpose), except this time each barcode is cross-referenced with a moblog not only neatly containing everyones opinion of this product, but also its ethical/corruption index. These types of measurements would be made via decentralized ad-hoc smart mobs in conjunction with individual reputation systems. So, not only will you be able to vote with your pocketbook, but you will be able to make informed, even ethical consumer decsions based on people you trust. I can see this web-of-trust rapidly superceding top-heavy "consumer" capitalism, transforming it into a bottom-up grass-roots participatory capitalism."

Mitch Ratcliffe says, and I agree: "This is sheer idiocy, because it will actually increase the risks to the national information infrastructure. From its inception, the Net was conceived as a distributed system that could reorganize around failures (in the case of the original designs, the Net was built to route around damage caused by nuclear weapons). Centralizing all network communications to facilitate surveillance will create a huge, ripe and easily attacked target, reducing the reliability and performance of the Internet on the whole and for each individual user. Likewise, the plan would invade the digital borders of other countries, creating many conflicts that don't impede communication today."

Browsing web pages using a mobile phone may not be very popular in Europe, but it is catching on among canny market traders in Senegal.

The snappily-named Wireless Application Protocol was launched to much fanfare in Europe over two years ago. But has not won many fans, despite the fact that most handsets can use it.

But Senegalese market traders are proving that the technology does have its uses thanks to a project run by Manobi, a joint venture run by French and Senegalese entrepreneurs.

Manobi uses teams to gather information about the prices of foods and goods being sold in the markets in and around Dakar.

"My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother of searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop."