Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Blog Tagged by Susan Crawford

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On Live Journal, we’d call this a meme. I usually don’t play, but how can I resist an invitation from Susan Crawford? In addition to running a fantastic and informative blog of her own, Susan is a member of the Board of Directors at ICANN and on the faculty of Cardozo Law School (Official motto: “With This Many Jews, How Did We Rank So Low In U.S. News & World Report? Goyishe Kop!”)

In any event, Susan has tagged me with the following meme:

“Post five things most people don’t know about you, and then tag five more people.”

I tag Sascha Meinrath, Esme Vos, David Isenberg, Tim Karr and Art Brodsky. My answers below.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
McDowell: “I Am Not A Pawn; Solve Your Own Damn Merger!”

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In a very special Christmas episode of the Telecom worlds favorite Telenovella, Death Star Reborn: The AT&T/BellSouth Merger Commissioner McDowell gives his fellow FCC Commissioners a lesson on ethics, the power of the Christmas spirit to facilitate good will towards all men, faith in negotiations in multibillion dollar mergers, and why it REALLY PISSES HIM OFF when people try to use him as “a pawn.”

You can read McDowell’s written statement (and supporting documentation) here, and watch the archive of the video of McDowell’s press conference here. You can see the statement from my employer, Media Access Project, here.

But for my personal analysis, see below . . .

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 8: Killer Apps

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Last time: “Give ‘Em What They Want,” in which I said that having a desirable application “from the beginning” is necessary to promote a platform.
Now: Sounds good, but how do we go about creating such a scenario? We engineer it!

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 7: Give ‘Em What They Want

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Last time: “Can’t Make a Killing From Platforms Without Killing the Community,” in which I said that those who develop a platform rarely recoup their cost directly, and so they might look to reduce their cost through open-source efforts.
Now: How do you create demand for a platform?

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 6: Can’t Make a Killing From Platforms Without Killing the Community

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Last time: “Platforms – The New Application-Centric Product Positioning,” in which I encouraged thinking about platforms communities rather than language technologies or standards.
Now: How does a single vendor create a platform community?

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 5: Platforms – The New Application-Centric Product Positioning

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Last time: “The Old Language-Centric Products Categories,” in which I said that the old model for vendors was to specialize in one of either language engine, libraries, or developer’s tools.
Now: What would happen if we generalized this approach?

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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My Thoughts Exactly:
To the barricades! Net Neutrality fight is on in Michigan

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Some background is here, at MYDD.

Harold, as always we’ll look to you for guidance in how to best help out. And of course factual analysis of the issues will help us too.

This fight is far from over. The good guys may be poised to take leadership positions in the Congress, but there are statehose battles raging as well. Now is no time to let down our guard.

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
How The Conservative/Big Business Alliance Bankrupted Air America

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Few things raised joyfull cackles among Republicans in the waning days of 2006. Many, however regarded the bankruptcy of Air America as a bright spot in an otherwise dismal fall. Talk radio, it appeared, remained part of the conservative “heartland” where such liberal voices as Al Franken meet a resounding silence.

However, as reported by the New York Times, the story may have a lot more to it then a tale of silly liberals who can’t run a business and have nothing interesting to say. It appears that 90 major national advertisers engaged in a boycott of Air America programming, to the extent that they wanted their advertising stripped out of syndicated material from other sources (here, ABC Radio Network). The interesting question, of course, is why would supposedly dissinterested companies with no motivation to interefere with domestic politics want to drive Air America out of business?

Hahahahaha…..I love it when I ask silly rhetorical questions like that. For a further specualtion on what apparently went on and why I think the new, Democratic Congress might want to do a little investigatin’ into the Case of Secret Boycott, see below….

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Inventing the Future:
Making a Living in Languages (Redux) part 4: The Old Language-Centric Products Categories

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Last time: “Hidden Special Purpose Languages,” in which we said that cool languages can be a secret sauce embedded within useful products.
Now: What about having each product share a common language?

[This is an excerpt from a Lisp conference talk I gave in 2002.]

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