Feed

  • Twitter

    I logged in the first time soon after it started in 2007. I did my ten years and then mostly logged off by 2017. I’m not likely to start using it again regularly although I still use it occasionally as a people bookmarking service of sorts. I logged in last week to get an ‘archive’ of all of my data and publish it elsewhere1,2.  I tweeted 828 times and based on the IDs in the data, I’m guessing that I was the 950,535th person to ever tweet. The process felt achingly familiar3. I’ve had some discussions with others about it recently and it reminds me to think about how I use the web. Per the course… I like to flush it out, write it down, and publish it so I can send a link instead of hashing it out in an email or text thread.

    Twitter was built as a MicroBlogging service. Microblogging as a type of broadcast medium was the forerunner to social networking platforms. Social networking existed from the moment the first network computer connections were made. Twitter had a good name and was the best breed of something not unique amongst the landscape at the time. The fundamentals of Twitter already existed elsewhere. The Twitter idea originated from Odeo4,5, a podcasting company. It was just a means of having an SMS group chat.  Evan Williams created Blogger which was sold to Google and was the basis of the ideas behind both podcasting and blogging. Before Twitter, social media meant connecting with others online primarily through email and RSS, both of which could be read from the same client and in a browser. Some folks worked out unique ways to notify others via email for pingbacks and trackbacks6. I was a fan of Friendfeed because it supported pulling feeds from various sources. Facebook acquired it for $15 million and shut it down7.  Similarly, Pump.io, StatusNet, and identi.ca were using the open-source Activity Streams format which was a precursor to the ‘Fediverse’ or federated social network terms tossed around today. 

    Inter-Net-work….the web was inherently social long before the media part. In Silicon Valley’s race to capitalize, proprietary methodologies were created because open standards hinder income potential. Even the data archive I got from Twitter last week isn’t exactly portable. The WC3, who sets the standards has recommended Web Mentions, Activity Streams, and Activity Pub9 standards which is the protocol that makes Mastodon federated. I migrated most of my Twitter follows over to Mastadon while I was at it last week. Watching the other platforms pivot to gain new users is amusing. Substack has added ‘mentions’, ’cross-posts’, and ‘best seller’ badges10. Tumblr rolled out a $7 badge and the owner insisted they would be implementing the activitypub specification which I noted appropriately11. I’m sure folks will figure out a way to spam those protocols too as long as there is a way to profit from them. Twitter turned to bots after it gained popularity and the account APIs were introduced. The bot, spam, link farms, etc were online long before Twitter too.

    Elon Musk recently tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” likely in reference to his surveys on reinstating previously banned accounts. It translates to the “Voice of the People is the Voice of God”,  but the full context of the most cited reference to that term is:

    Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.  “ And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. 

    ~ Alcuin in his letters to Charlamagne Epistle 127 in 760AD12.

    The riotousness of the crowd is Twitter. And Twitter is just a bellwether for the internet as a whole as we adapt to new communications mediums. Those first couple of years were just techie types tweeting because those were most of the same folks with websites.  Then came the journalists, media, celebrities, publishers, and internet celebrities. Then everyone’s uncle had it installed on their phone.  When those other folks started rambling on about their other interests, I lost interest. And then they started to monetize it all with adverts, tracking users across the web, and rewriting shared URLs so they could track those too.  The most retweeted thing ever was a pyramid scheme offering a reward for retweets. The web was already decentralized and will likely always be outside some platforms’ walled gardens. I just hope that the efforts to improve the open standards aren’t sabotaged by private interests.

    I’m sure in the coming year we’ll end up hearing a lot more on free speech and social media. I have a very simple minded approach to it which I wrote about pretty extensively in my article on Section 23013. I think that you’re welcome to espouse your opinions, ideas, or theories however you’d like but not entirely without consequence if they are damanging to others. I think that the main product of social media platforms, aside from usability, is sorting and moderating that information so that it’s vaulable to it’s end users. A platform like Twitter is a private company and can make itself reponsible for moderation however it best see’s fit to it’s own business model. And likewise, I can excersize my own liberty to not pay it any attention.

    I’d use social media again if I had something to promote and I suppose I’m lucky not to have the need. Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams apologized saying he was “wrong to think that an open platform where people could speak freely would make the world a better place”.  I wouldn’t completely agree with him on that because I believe there have been some good things gained through social networking platforms.  I read an essay recently fed to me, not via social media but my handy dandy good ole’ fashion hosted RSS reader…  entitled A Tweet Before Dying that said “What then? We’ll all move over to some Twitter replacement like Mastodon, hundreds of millions of us, and ruin that too? Sigh.”13. Other than echoing my sentiments here, whatever happens with Twitter means very little to me because I choose to rely not on the platform itself but on the interoperable standards of the internet which were social from the get go. 

    2022/12/03 Update:

    Right on Cue… Matt Taibbi, the investigative journalist published a series of tweets he’s calling the Twitter Files15 yesterday afternoon looking into the content moderation efforts of Twitter during the last election. Main takeaway for me was the fact that, imagine this… people are sending emails around requesting removals and questioning various policies. Sometimes just having an audience has it’s own consequences.

    2025/11/15 Update:

    The thing is… all this new reporting on foreign spam accounts seems so obvious to me, I can’t even really understand how it’s news other than the fact that they added the ‘about this account’ features showing country of origin16. The new reporting did kinda touch on something I hinted at here and that America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle17. Perhaps I’ll log in again and leave this as my only ‘tweet’ since I previously deleted all of the others… na, ole Space Karen isn’t getting any eyeballs from me.

    1. @windhamdavid tweets – https://davidwindham.com/til/lists/tweets 
    2. @windhamdavid follows – https://davidwindham.com/til/lists/people#i-follow-on-twitter
    3. Windham, D. 2020. Dirty Algorithm – https://davidwindham.com/dirty-algorithm/
    4. Odeo – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo
    5. Twitter History – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History 
    6. Pingback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback
    7. FriendFeed – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed 
    8. Silicon Valley – S3E10 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)
    9. W3C Social Web Protocols- https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ 
    10. Substack – https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-mentions-and-cross-posts
    11. Tumblr –https://windhamdavid.tumblr.com/
    12. Alcuin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcuin
    13. Windham, D. 2021. Section 230 – https://davidwindham.com/section-230/
    14. Ford, P. 2022. A Tweet Before Dying – https://www.wired.com/story/tweet-dying-revolutionary-internet/
    15. Taibbi, M. 2022. The Twitter Files – https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
    16. Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors – https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/x-about-this-account/685042/
    17. America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle – https://www.404media.co/americas-polarization-has-become-the-worlds-side-hustle

  • David Byrne

    I went to see David Byrne in Asheville a couple weeks ago. We were in the first rows and the audience started following the performers dance moves. It was like being in some sorta intimate line dance with the band. It was stellar. Watching him perform is more akin to watching a preacher than a rock musician. I’ve had a long held fascination with David Byrne and I think it began in August of 1981 when MTV first went on the air and I saw this video.

    I would have been just under 10 years old the first time I saw the video, but I remember quite vividly the debut of MTV on our console television in the living room. MTV aired a bunch of the same videos1 over and over, but none of them grabbed my attention the way Once In A Lifetime by the Talking Heads2 did. In retrospect, I believe the innovative use of film editing was just the product of the art school background of the Talking Heads band members. At that age, I didn’t really understand the meaning of the lyrics and it was only the motion that intrigued me. Regardless, the song reappeared in a 1989 film entitled Down and Out In Beverly Hills3, which gave me a bit of insight into the meaning of it. The theme of the film kinda nailed the existential crisis of the song lyrics. About that same time (1989) I owned exactly two concert films on VHS: The Song Remains the Same by Led Zepplin and Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads4. Both of which are two of my all time favorite concert films. I bought up about every Talking Heads and David Byrne CDs I could get my hands on. And I played them non-stop. I had a couple friends who also enjoyed them, but they were few and far between.

    Skip ahead fifteen years or so, when I met my wife in college. Two things really stood out about our first date from my other gal pals. The first is that she had a really good sense of humor, not just the giggle type, but the dark and cynical gut rolling humor I like. The second thing is that she really liked the David Byrne and Talking Heads. It wasn’t just the ‘oh yeah, they’re cool’ type of like. She knew all of the lyrics to most of the songs and understood them. The first birthday gift I ever bought her was a talking heads CD box set. We played that thing out on every trip we took. I’ve since read How Music Works6 and followed about every recording project, film, or book he’s been involved with. I’m also particularly fond of his internet radio station7 because of the way he curates the playlists. I can’t say there is anything he’s created that I don’t like. I am particularly fond of a couple though… the film True Stories, Look Into the Eyeball, and Uh-Oh. I also really like the soundtrack to The Last Emperor and it was nice seeing him play himself on the Simpsons Dude, Where’s My Ranch? and in This Must Be the Place.

    Neither of us have ever seen David Byrne in concert. I bought the tickets as soon as they went on sale and put us in the second row. As with what has been noted the style of that original video in that he studied archive footage of “preachers, evangelists, people in trances, African tribes, Japanese religious sects” to see how he could incorporate them into his performance… the live performance we watched wasn’t too far off. The way he engaged the audience wasn’t that of a rock star, but of an evangelist. Because the set design was so simple and the accompanying band members engaged in a rehearsed synchronized dance routine, the first ten rows of the auditorium were completely engaged in the performance. Him and his crew were working hard breaking a sweat, and had obviously spent countless hours rehearsing the material and choreography. Like I said… it was top notch. We already knew the lyrics to the new album so we listened to the Imelda Marcos inspired musical Here Lies Love5 written by Byrne on the way up, while Ginny researched the Marcos’ real life. On the way back we listened to Brian Eno. I’d give the American Utopia concert a 10/10. And I give David a 10/10 on being an artist and a decent human being.

    Here’s the setlist for the show (Asheville, NC – May 8th, 2018):
    Here – Lazy- I Zimbra (Talking Heads) – Slippery People (Talking Heads) – I Should Watch TV (David Byrne & St. Vincent) – Dog’s Mind – Everybody’s Coming to My House – This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) (Talking Heads) – Once In a Lifetime (Talking Heads) – Doing the Right Thing – Toe Jam (Brighton Port Authority) – Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)(Talking Heads) – I Dance Like This – Bullet – Every Day Is a Miracle – Like Humans Do – Blind (Talking Heads) – Burning Down the House (Talking Heads) – Encore: Dancing Together – The Great Curve (Talking Heads) – Hell You Talmbout (Janelle Monáe)

    25/12/04 Update: We saw David again last night in Atlanta for the Who Is the Sky? tour8. The thing is I’ve seen a lot of concerts in my lifetime and it’s definitely different. David takes a bunch of highly trained dancers, musicians, and vocalists and puts em through their paces in a thematic visually stunning choreographed set. He gave em what they wanted on this tour, yet the set list of songs somehow still felt like a tightly planned concept album. It’s really about him as an artist. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s like he’s floating up above it to steal a line from his song. He’s not rooted in any physical place or timeline even though several of the songs have very physical references. The lyricism is timeless and abstract – he blended a setlist that spans almost fifty years. Here’s the setlist:

    • Heaven ( Fear of Music )
    • Everybody Laughs ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • And She Was ( Little Creatures )
    • Strange Overtones (Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today )
    • Houses in Motion ( Remain in Light )
    • T Shirt ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • (Nothing but) Flowers ( Naked )
    • This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) ( Speaking in Tongues )
    • What Is the Reason for It? ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Like Humans Do ( Look into the Eyeball )
    • Don’t Be Like That ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Independence Day ( Rei Momo )
    • Slippery People ( Speaking in Tongues )
    • I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • My Apartment Is My Friend ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Hard Times ( Paramore cover )
    • Psycho Killer ( Talking Heads: 77 )
    • Life During Wartime ( Fear of Music )
    • Once in a Lifetime ( Remain in Light )
    • Everybody’s Coming to My House ( American Utopia )
    • Burning Down the House ( Speaking in Tongues )

    Anyway, you can go find the tour show reviews out there so I’m not going to sum it up. The Fox in Atlanta is wild with its mosque design. All I’ll say is if you haven’t seen a performance – it’s good – definitely worth the effort. Seeing the show is just a reminder of possibilities.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_music_videos_aired_on_MTV
    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(Talking_Heads_song)
    3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Beverly_Hills
    4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
    5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Lies_Love
    6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Music_Works
    7. http://davidbyrne.com/radio
    8. Who Is the Sky? – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_the_Sky%3F

  • Man from Plains

    All this talk of politics has affected my netflix lineup. Last night we watched the documentary “Man from Plains“2 about Jimmy Carter3 and his most recent book. I’ve got to say that Jonathan Demme4 is one of the better filmmakers of our time. Ever since Stop Making Sense5, a video concert of the Talking Heads was released I’ve been a fan. What I like about Demme is the unbiased and personal approach. I’ve always said of good photographers and painters whom work with portraiture that the best approach is to be as transparent as possible so as to not influence the subject in any manner. This film does just that as it documents Carter’s travels to promote his most recent and controversial book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid6.

    The film gives an honest perspective on the man and his principles as Demme was obviously given good access the former president during the filming and what impressed me most was exactly how candid and emotional Carter was during the filming. He is obviously a very intelligent man in the way he handles conversation and which may also explain why he is a physicist by trade. What is controversial about the book is that Carter is trying to explain that perhaps the Palastinians have been wronged which is very bold and politically incorrect these days. But Carter does it with eloquence and good rhetoric in the face of staunch adversaries.

    After the film, I followed up with some research on Carter and his policies. What amazed me is how strong his opinions about peace and energy conservation. He actually reduced the dependence on foreign oil by half during tenure as president. He installed solar panels (which were later removed) on the white house! It’s amazing how we continue to repeat ourselves in history as I think my third grade teacher began the first history lesson i remember with that exact phrase. President Carter had some interesting approaches to energy policy that may hold in todays atmosphere.

    Don’t get me wrong…I’m not a political or economic expert, but I can tell you a good deal about the Laffer Curve7 and supply side, trickle down Reaganomics including the fact that Author Laffer and Wanninski, credited with coining the term did so over a meeting in 1974 with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld present…so I’ll let you do your own research8. But I am a good with the study of human character and I can tell you that I am compelled to believe that Jimmy Carter is a good man with honest motives or at least the film did an excellent job of concealing anything otherwise.

    April 20, 1979, White House photo of Carter and rabbit from the Carter Library
    April 20, 1979, White House photo of Carter and rabbit from the Carter Library [1]

    I can whole heartedly recommend that you see the film for yourself. The photo above is of Carter fishing when a swimming rabbit “attacked” his boat.. lucky the secret service was there to capture it on film.

    23/12/06 – The rabbit incident came up in a conversation likely due to conflict in Gaza9. I replaced the missing photo and added the references. I didn’t replace any of the original links, correct any of the grammatical, or fix the spelling errors.

    25/01/09 – I referenced this essay in a recent conversation with friends since he passed away at age 100. He was the longest-lived president in U.S. history. I read quite a bit about him recently and I watched the service on C-Span 10 this morning. The Carter Center published a tribute site 11 that’s worth your time. I left a condolence message. The more I learn… the more I like.

    Jimmy Carter is an inspiration for a life well lived. I told my friends I’m gonna pick up some tools in his honor and to handle some carpentry work for myself and I might even go so far as start working on the solar thing. I’ve referenced the Crisis of Confidence speech12 a number of times recently and I suggest a revisit. I first picked up on it in the film 20th Century Women and rewatching it had profound affect. I sympathize with Jimmy Carter’s tough mind, soft heart mentality and I hope that his work to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering is an inspiration for generations to come14.

    1. Jimmy Carter rabbit incident – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident
    2. Man From Plains – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Plains
    3. Jimmy Carter – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
    4. Jonathan Demme – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Demme
    5. Stop Making Sense – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
    6. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid
    7. Laffer Curve – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
    8. Reaganomics – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics
    9. Israel – Hamas War – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel–Hamas_war
    10. President Jimmy Carter Funeral Service at National Cathedral – https://www.c-span.org/event/public-affairs-event/president-jimmy-carter-funeral-service-at-national-cathedral/429876
    11. Jimmy Carter Tribute – https://www.jimmycartertribute.org
    12. President Carter Address on Crisis of Confidence – https://www.c-span.org/program/american-history-tv/president-carter-address-on-crisis-of-confidence/154404
    13. 20th Century Women – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Women
    14. Carter Center – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center

  • American Culture Gone Bad

    What can I say about this? American Culture gone bad?

  • Sam Doyle

    Artist Sam Doyle
    Was A Guin Mon/U. Dig Me?, 1980. Sam Doyle: Enamel paint on metal, 28×22”

    Dr Buzzard - Sam Doyle
    Dr. Buzz. Sam Doyle – Enamel paint and tar on metal (with conch shell), 57×27”

    I am always checking the art galleries in downtown Charleston and as the city becomes more saturated with newbies, I am reminded of how much culture is already here in the Lowcountry of SC. Here’s some stuff I know about because I’ve been to the places, read the books, seen the paintings, and visited the artists.

    The subjects of Sam Doyle’s1 paintings are his community, the Island of St. Helena. As a child in the early 1900’s, Sam Doyle saw the migration first hand. He himself was offered an opportunity, early on, to leave his island for New York City by a sister of one of his teachers at the Penn School3. His refusal to migrate to New York for formal art training was a direct function of his family’s impoverished condition

    Local Heroes: Paintings and Sculpture by Sam Doyle – High Museum of Art, Atlanta3 – 70 portraits with subjects ranging from Miss Luckie Food Stamp and Onk Sam to Martin Luther King and Ray Charles, done in house paint on old roofing tin by Sam Doyle (1906-1985), who lived his entire life near the small community of Frogmore on St. Helena Island, S. C. The show originated at the Portland (Ore.) Art Museum; following its appearance in Fort Worth, it travels to the Muse des Arts Dcoratif, Paris, and the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

    High Sherrif of the Lowcountry is a book written by Sheriff J. E. McTeer. (1903-1979): McTeer began his 37-year term as Beaufort County Sheriff in 1926, the nation’s youngest sheriff at age 22. He was a self-proclaimed witch doctor whose best-known nemesis during his law enforcement career was “root doctor” Doctor Buzzard (Stepheney Robinson), who eventually admitted that McTeer’s voodoo powers were greater than his own. The Sheriff’s books — High Sheriff of the Lowcountry; 50 Years as a Lowcountry Witch Doctor; Beaufort, Now and Then; and Adventure in the Woods and Waters of the Lowcountry — reflect the words inscribed on the bridge that now bears his name: “legendary lawman, author, spellbinder and raconteur.”

    1. Sam Doyle – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Doyle
    2. Penn Center – https://www.penncenter.com
    3. Local Heroes: Paintings and Sculpture by Sam Doyle – High Museum of Art, Atlanta – https://www.tfaoi.org/aa/2aa/2aa16.htm
    4. High Sherrif of the Lowcountry – J.E. McTeer – https://books.google.com/books/about/High_Sheriff_of_the_Low_Country.html
    5. Sam Doyle – National Gallery of Art – https://www.nga.gov/features/exhibitions/outliers-and-american-vanguard-artist-biographies/sam-doyle.html
    6. Sam Doyle – Smithsonian American Art Museum – https://americanart.si.edu/artist/sam-doyle-7400
    7. Uncommon Folk – Sam Doyle – South Carolina PBS – https://www.knowitall.org/video/uncommon-folk-sam-doyle
    8. Artist Spotlight: Sam Doyle (American, 1906–1985) – Gibbes Museum of Art – https://www.gibbesmuseum.org/news/artist-spotlight-sam-doyle-american-1906-1985/

    23/12/01 – I’ve noticed that I get some web traffic to this page, so I spruced it up a bit to remove some dead links and add references. The reason I originally published this is that we had two Sam Doyle paintings in a restaurant I worked and I always had folks asking about them. I think they were sold to a collector in Japan when it shut down in 2003 or so. One of them was also of Dr. Buzz, who I made an effort to learn about from the High Sherrif of the Lowcountry Book I had bought down in Beaufort.

    Dead Links:

    • http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/1998/art/pages/doyle.htm
    • https://rawvision.com/back/doyle/doyle.html
    • http://www.art.org/exhibitions/archives/2001/doyle.htm
    • https://folkart.org/mag/delmas/delmas.html

  • 34,125,981 YouTube Views

    While reading the NYtimes.com this morning, I came across this article. “The Online Auteurs”, when I came across this blog.. “Virginia Heffernan on Web video and media convergence”., where I found this interesting stat… This video has been viewed almost 35 million times.. the most of any Youtube video. The article has a great explanation as to why.

  • Coltrane Robot

    This is a video of a robot playing John Coltrane’s Giant Steps followed by an audio recording of the same song performed live. I think you can clearly see that the robot isn’t capable of matching the human intonation.

  • No I Can’t Stop Your Spam Revisited

    * Spam (R) (capitalized) is a registered trademark of a meat product made by Hormel. Use of the term spam (uncapitalized) in the Internet community comes from a Monty Python sketch and is almost Internet folklore. The term spam is usually pejorative, however this is not in any way intended to describe the Hormel product. This is a follow up on my previous posts No, I can’t stop your spam.

    The more I talk computers, the more I hear spam.. client after client.. and this is the primary reason I don’t run any client emails through our servers. They are better served by an ISP or hosting provider with 24/7 support and I don’t have to deal with the security risk associated with qmail. I began receiving some strange notices from one of my servers last week and after a good look at the server, we discovered some issues with security, qmail, and smtp..
    so here’s my quick advice and some further reading material.

    Most spam originates from a small number of outfits, and ever since the Cam Spam act of 2003 gave some bite to laws against unsolicited email, most of these outfits try to conceal their identities by relaying, using small ISP’s etc.. this is what I say, if you maintain a server or an entire network, you should feel obligated to make sure that it is secure for the benefit of everyone. And my advice to anyone who receives spam. Report it here and don’t publish an email address unless absolutely necessary.

  • Net Neutrality

    Caught this on an episode of The Daily Show with John Stewart.

    “The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s, it’s a series of tubes”

    Senator Ted Steves (R-Alaska)

  • Congressional Lame Duck Session, Net Neutrality, and Why the Internet is Twice as Fast in Much of Asia.

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
    Undeclared on Net Neutrality
    Call Sen. Graham now at 864-250-1417
    Say: “I urge Senator Graham to protect Net Neutrality, which prevents the largest phone and cable companies from controlling the Internet. I urge the Senator to vote NO on Senator Stevens’ telecommunications bill (H.R. 5252 / S. 2686) unless real Net Neutrality language is added that prohibits network operators from discriminating against content and creating a tiered Internet.”

    Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
    Against Net Neutrality
    Call Sen. DeMint now at 864 233-5366
    On May 16, the Senator made this statement:
    “Opposing the heavy hand of regulation that network neutraliy represents is critical if we are to maintain the Internet as an open, evolving, and market-based tool, and to protect children and families from the negative aspects of Internet content that exist today.”

    The politicians are out spending their 3 billion dollar stash, most of which comes from business and works out to approximately $60 a vote cast, to get back into office. And with broadcasters, publishers and telecommunications companies trying to stave off the effect of internet media publishing, the ipod, IPtv, VOIP, and HD radio, the effect is very similar to John D. Rockefeller buying up the train lines that carried thier oil to monoplize the market. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and the like are spending 3 million a week lobbying congress. There is no way that AT&T or Bellsouth is going to stand idle while companies like Google and Vonage use their framework to provide voice over phone service and broadband media content when they could be the beneficiaries of these new technologies. Well… the FCC governs the industry and overhauled the Communications Act of 1934 into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that resulted in a massive corporate takeover of broadcasting and publishing.
    So what the ISP (internet service providers) want is a way to control how their networks are used by levying fees for large users of the internet.. ie.. google, ebay, vonage, etc. The AT&T CEO has declared that Google should no longer get a free ride, and should pay AT&T in order to be delivered to AT&T’s customers. Well…. this is a hustle. The telecommunications companies were supposed to be providing fibre optic connections for most of america during the 90’s after congress passed legislation to benefit them in that effort. They stuck the money in their pockets and that is why our copper lines are still the predominate connection to the internet and the Asia pacific network connections are twice as fast. For many years, Internet access across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) was governed by common carrier regulations. These guidelines required unbundling of communications services and ISP functions. However, on August 5, 2005, the FCC reclassified DSL services as Information Services rather than Telecommunications Services. This sparked a debate over whether or not Internet Service Providers should also be allowed to discriminate between different service providers by offering higher network priority to higher-paying companies and customers, allowing some services to operate faster or more predictably and ultimately become more acceptable to end users. For more info….

  • Image Gallery

    These are some images I captured in and around Charleston from the last couple years or so I’m using to test out a WordPress gallery feature:

  • How Do You Do That?

    It’s a question I get from from people asking how I get websites listed at the top of search engines. It’s not magic. It’s mostly just logic. For the most part, Google, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, Search.com, MSN etc… use an algorithm like the page rank system which is patented by Google.
    the paper that started it all… check out the pics! US Patent 6285999 It’s some heavy stuff…. but I’ll try it in thirty words or less.

    Sergey Brin (Сергей Михайлович Брин) and Larry Page (both 33, founders of google, the 26th and 27th richest people in the world according to Forbes ) created page rank while at school.. ok.. that doesn’t count for my thirty words. Searches are based on Probability Distribution which are alot like the ole bell curve in class.. you assign every number (grade) a probabilty and you use functions for a distribution graph like this beta distribution
    In trying to match terms with pages, it gives each page a ranking which is updated everytime the site is crawled. The ranking is determined by a series of algorithms that try to determine link probablilty in the distribution. That’s PR (page ranking) N (number of pages) L (links) d(dampening factor) M(pages that link to the page) (p) (other pages under consideration for ranking) got it? The dampening factor determines that any random internet surfer will eventually stop clicking! If you really want to know more… here you go.. Modified Adjacendy Matrix , Markov Chain , & Eigenvector Centrality

    There are ways to spoof the formulas, but the best long term approach is to give straight-foward content as it closely pertains to your site, use xml sitemaps, maintain standards compliant code, update content often, use rss, but most of all don’t over do anything… the mathematics behind the search engines are very democratic and straight-foward content is the easiest way to achieve results… and if this doesn’t work, you can always go giving the guys at google or some other middleman “SEO guru” more money for paid placement. 🙂

    I like googleDuel and google analytics for figuring out search habits.

  • No. I Can’t Stop Your Spam!

    I keep hearing that question over and over from folks I meet with and I always recommend switching email providers as a first option. The AOL address seem to be the worst. I don’t even think some folks know what spam is. They just assume that having an email address means getting unsolicited emails. Sometimes I have to explain to them that it’s actually spam and it’s illegal.

    The second question I’m asked is who around town does good web work? As far as I can tell, these local people seem to know what they are doing.