The News.com article spins Comcast’s statement that it will deploy voice over IP service in 2004 as a “go slow” decision.  With 2004 just 3 months away, I see the glass as half-full.  The Comcast comments are further evidence that cable operators will launch serious VOIP marketing efforts in 2005, after testing it next year.  At that point, the telephone industry of we know it will cease to exist. 

Kevin Laws: “If the music industry is such a monopoly, why aren’t music companies wildly profitable?”

This time in Forbes, with an extensive focus on Pulver’s Free World Dialup and related efforts.

Has anyone else noticed that over the past month, the New York Times has run a series of articles suggesting that the current intellectual property system is broken?  This one about the history of patents and innovation is the latest.  I think IP protection has gotten way out of balance, to the detriment of users and innovators, so I’m happy to see the Times’ coverage.  All of the articles are ...

David Brooks writes in the Wall Street Journal about conservatives not being welcome in academia. Juan at the Volokh Conspiracy agrees, and links to several other posts on the topic. American intellectual life is recreating the division between the Red States and the Blue States made famous in the Bush-Gore election of 2000. Liberals are over-represented on most university faculties, and conservatives are over-represented in well-funded, well-connected think tanks. We ...

Check out these amazing optical illusions by Akiyoshi Kitaoka.  But be warned — they can be nausea-inducing!  You won’t believe it, but they aren’t moving.  Trust me.  (via Brian Dear)

Jerry Michalski explains why the new social networking services give him the willies. (And who knew that the Red Herring still had a functioning Website?) UPDATE:  It’s the new, improved, post-bubble, relaunched, no-longer-dead Red Herring.  That explains it.

I’m going out of town for a few days to visit family.  Including the latest addition, my three-week-old niece Mila.  I’ll be checking email occasionally, but mostly offline through Monday.

“Weblogs, Inc. is a B2B Web site dedicated to creating niche Weblogs (a.k.a. blogs) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product.” Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Corante, Nick Denton’s microcontent collection, TechDirt, AlwaysOn, and now this.  I do think there’s room to build successful niche content sites through blogging, but I agree with Nick Denton that it’s a bunch of ...