Jason McCabe Calacanis (Weblogs) writes about this… Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) does not want to have *any* advertising, even if all of the proceeds were to go to worthy causes.

Is there anything wrong with that? Jason appears to think so, pleading with Jimmy to reconsider. There’ll even be free bandwidth chucked in. But that’s a catch… Jimmy does not want to be dependent on anyone else for hardware or bandwidth, Wikipedia has had fab offers from a variety of companies with great infrastructure. Other people are commenting to that blog post also, some reckon that Jimmy might change his mind “for the right price”. I’m pondering… is it really so hard to understand -or at least appreciate and respect- that some people have certain guiding principles and actually stick with them – no price? Are we really so cynical now that we reckon that everything and everybody has a price?

And is advertising really completely harmless, could someone have advertising on a site and not have it change the site at all, nor affect the users in any way? I reckon not. By definition, for the advertising to be effective it has to catch the user’s eye – so it distracts from whatever they were doing. That’s the objective, and it’s not in sync with Wikipedia’s goals. Also, what about independence? Wikipedia aims to be neutral, and you can’t really say you’re neutral if at the same time some companies advertise on your site… so the solution is: no advertising.

I think Jimmy’s line is perfectly sensible, given his principles and objectives for Wikipedia. Rock on Jimbo.

The domain registrars are making more money again, this time with .mobi. Naturally, people with a trademark or other (like .com) domain will be wanting to grab their .mobi so noone else can nick off with it. But what’s the practical purpose of all these additional toplevel domains?

As far as I can tell, it’s just a money making scheme just like .biz was. You may use one or the other to provide advance clarity to your users/customers, but you’ll want/need to grab all the domains anyway to keep them safe.
Guh.

See this article on InformationWeek.

Looks like an excellent development.
I just hope the EFF has picked the case carefully…

…is a pain. Most hotels “kind of” have broadband Internet access, where broadband is defined as an Ethernet cable or wireless. Usually it’s ridiculously expensive, like $5 per hour or $20 for 24 hours. It bears no relation to actual cost. It makes dining from the minibar look cheap ;-)

I was just browsing for a hotel in Sydney (training course next week), and spotted this:

Broadband available (additional charges apply, PC must have PCI slot)

I know not what to say.

After a successful training (teaching) week, I’m on my way back home.
I also had a chat at AuckLUG (facilitated by the Auckland Novell
offices) and got invited to an “NZ 2.0” meeting at Galbraith’s
brewhouse by Nat Torkington. That was particularly interesting.

Airports are always good fun, lots of computers and other signs at
work. On the way in the main arrivals/departures displays were low on
virtual memory (photo attached), one the way out I saw a shop
advertising LCD tell that its Norton Antivirus subscription had
almost expired and that it had protected against 78000 viruses
already (how can that box possibly be so exposed?) and another screen
in the departure lounge displayed a blue screen of death. Not picking
on Auckland, this is pretty typical. Sigh.

There was also a sign on a garbage bin saying “no spitting, please
use toilets”. Hmm…

And one particular quarantine display cabinet actually contained a
decorated monkey skull (hello Indiana Jones! what are people thinking
when they buy stuff like that?)

AirNZ’s (Boeing 747/777) in-flight system is curious… on boot each
seat needs to load stuff in various stages, first a fairly long
Xmodem download, then some DHCP netboot magic, then a TFTP download
for the GUI. If the system crashes for some seats, the only recovery
method is to shut down while entertainment system for the whole
aircraft, wait some time, and reboot (which takes 20-30 minutes).
Surely… (oh never mind)
The captain just explained that people should pause between pressing
buttons (through the intuitive!? system) because otherwise the system
might lock up “just like your computer at home when you click the
right mouse button repeatedly”). Oh dear.