Drew Clark's Broadband Census is a worthy effort: find out what Internet connection speeds people actually get, vs. what's promised.

In the Linux and FOSS worlds we've been complaining for decades about vendor lock-in, platform and service silos, walled gardens and other annoyances. So now I'm wondering what scholarship has been devoted to these practices.

Has anybody noticed that TV is no longer an over-the-air medium?

So Oracle bought Sun. Aside from the usual vendor sports stories (IBM lost this one), what's the deal here for Linux and other open source fixtures in both Sun's and Oracle's portfolios? What happens to MySQL? What happens to Java? How about Solaris? You tell us.

I never liked the terms "upload" and "download". I think "inload" and "outload" might be better, just because they don't carry implications of subordination or unequal required effort.

As it happens most of our home connections are asymmetrical: much higher coming in than going out.

Why is FREE! the world's best-selling noun, verb, adjective and adverb, yet so hard to credit as a foundation for business in the Internet Age? And what will happen when business folk finally grok the abundant opportunities that FREE! provides?

The time has come to re-define "parties" in business.

In software, "third parties" have always been accessories to supply more than to demand, because their job in most cases was to add value to a vendor's platform. But growth in customer power will invite a new kind of software and service into the marketplace: a kind that adds value to the customer's platform and weight to the customer's side of the market's equation. What do we call that new kind of software, and the kinds of companies that put it to use?

Getting a fail whale this morning again on Twitter.

SMTP never gave me a whale. Nor has POP3, SSH, XMPP or any of the other protocols in the Internet Suite.

Back at the 2003 OSCON, r0ml Lefkowitz gave a talk called "Six Missing Open Source Projects".The next year he gave a talk titled "More Missing Open Source Projects".

The U.S. government isn't the only one hoping to stimulate its national economy by raising available Internet speeds. JooAng Daily in Korea reports that the Korea Communications Commission has announced an infrastructure investment plan that will increase high-speed iInternet service speeds to 1Gbps, and wireless broadband service speeds to 10Mbps. Both are 10x the current service speeds, which are far higher than those we enjoy (or endure) in the U.S..

Ever wanted to improve AT&T wireless service? Yah, me too. Many times. Well, seems you can — with a "personal 3G mini cellular tower" from Cisco.

That's the killer lesson of Dave Winer's new apporach to noise-filtered tweeting. "Friends" and "followers" aren't what matter. If you want substance, you need useful inputs. Not volume. Not style. Not popularity. Those have their places, just not in your face when you're looking for useful and interesting stuff.

It's long been clear to me that the biggest lock-in Microsoft has, at the enterprise level, is not with Windows or personal apps, but with Exchange Server. And the biggest problem there is this: it's good. Enterprises like it. And, since Exchange works only or best with Windows machines, the lock-in extends to much else. Linux and Mac boxes get purged and replaced by Windows ones.

Or so goes the story I hear from folks at big enterprises.

So I'm wondering about alternatives.

The Internet is infrastructure. This should be plain, but it's not. The reason is that neither the Net nor infrastructure are well-understood, even though both could hardly be more widely used.

Public wi-fi in airports and hotels is offered on the pay toilet model. It charges money to use low-cost plumbing facilities. I believe it would be better for airports, and their passengers, if plumbing usage were free, just as it is for water and trains between terminals.

Can we tell them how?

Om Malik calls this "dave winer's best post of the year". I can't recall a better one, but ranking isn't what matters here. What matters is perspective and experience, and Dave has plenty of both. What he says is,

I've always had a thing for remote control (RC) aircraft. The kid and I have several half-broken ones to prove it. So now I'm thinking about taking it to the next level. Literally. With a DIY Drone -- a kind of aerial robot.

Typeanalyzer says Linux Journal is one of The Guardians. That is,

The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done.

JFK said "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." So I'm here to claim Linux-based geek paternity for the successful presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The geeks didn't do it alone, of course. But their role was huge.

It's time to start fixing telecom, even as we're moving past it. If ideas are weather systems, that's the squall I'll bring to the Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London tomorrow and Wednesday. This is my first time at one (it's the fifth in their series), and I'm looking forward to it.