My Old Years resolutions for 2010

This should be the least interrupted workweek of the year thanks to the wrap-around holidays. I have 2 Old Years resolutions for 2010:

• Get TryPod off the ground, with workable code, examples and some help
• Get my office cleaned up

Let's see how I do... I have 4 work days.

The end of the internet as we knew it.

Cloud computing suddenly has a dark future, taking what may be a mortal blow thanks to the Wikileaks censorship by Amazon.

Yahoo is killing off delicious, a seriously good social bookmarking site.

Yahoo may next kill off Flickr, if their track record is any guide, they have no clue how to create value on the internet.

Facebook is just one big flytrap for personal information.

There was a big migration to hosted services on the internet.... and this was allowing everyone to ignore the asymmetric model of access being slide under our noses... but no longer.

If you want your kids and future generations to have a voice at all in the future... here are some things you need to learn about.

• Net neutrality means that everyone should be able to host their own stuff, create new services, and have them equally accessible from anywhere on the net. It is not a communist plot to deprive ISPs from profit.
• If you can't run your own servers, you don't have free speech... its worth a few bucks to have freedom.
• Computing Security can be fixed... it requires a new model of security called Capability Based Security, or also known as the "principle of least privilege".  If you have this model in place, you'll never need a virus scanner ever again.
• Wikileaks is not evil... they didn't break any laws... those who denounce them are the ones you have to worry about if you value your liberty.
• If you want to share photos with your family... you should be able to do it with your own hardware and an internet connection.... nobody else should be required as middlemen.

Things are changing... power is being re-distributed back to the people who chose to take it back, one small piece at a time.

On the need for real internet connections

Most of us don't have a real internet connection, and it limits our freedom in a subtle, but increasingly important way. We are NOT free to use the internet as it was originally intended... to allow anyone to make a program on their server freely available to others. We've slowly been migrated into a "consumer" version, where we are merely free to choose from selections handed down to us by others who know what's good for us.

This makes itself firmly felt when someone wants to tell the truth, and finds themselves unable to offer them hosting because one Senator (or any other "Elite") makes a subtle threat in a phone call to Amazon. Isn't technology great, you don't have to burn books any more, you can just cut off internet connections! Goebbles would drool at the power exercised by Mr Lieberman in the past week.

Free speech is an important check on the abuse of power by those in Government and other positions of authority. It has now been shown that freedom of speech on the Internet is fundamentally non-existent for most of us.

Net neutrality is important... if you don't understand what it means, find out.

"In Germany they first came for the Communists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 

Then they came for the Jews, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 

Then they came for the trade unionists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 

Then they came for the Catholics, 

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 

Then they came for me — 

and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Please don't let history repeat itself.

The Internet Licensing countdown

How long do YOU think it will be until we have to have a license to use the internet?

I suspect it'll take about 6 months from now.

I suspect everyone will go along with it.