I haven't had a chance to read the actual ruling yet but from what I gather the only small print is that the big ISPs will be allowed to charge a 10% markup.  If you're interested Teksavvy has posted this press release (PDF).

I used to run a lot more software on my personal website but I just don't have the time to maintain tools like Gallery with my current day job if I ever want to take some time off from being a sysadmin.  (Which I do!)  So I started looking at alternatives to Gallery in the WordPress plugin database and didn't find anything I really liked but it gave me the idea that I should investigate using Flickr to host my images.  At any rate, after playing around with Dan Coulter's phpFlickr class and fumbling my way through the Flickr API I've managed to cobble together a passable little photo gallery with all the backend content and meta data being stored on Yahoo! servers.  This also has the side benefit of reducing my bandwidth usage and hopefully speeding things up for remote users.  I'll probably rework things someday once I actually read the Flickr API documentation and figure out a slightly more elegant way of doing things.

I'd post the code I wrote to create my galleries but I'm so rusty with PHP it would probably be a crime.  Once I clean things up a bit and standardize how I'm doing things I'll try to make it available for anybody who might be interested, the only serious limitation of my approach is that it is not a full-fledged WordPress plugin so it requires the ability to execute inline PHP on WordPress pages to call my gallery function but it's still fairly simple to do and doesn't require much overhead compared to building and managing a local photo gallery.

I also integrated Lightbox into the photo galleries to make things look a little sharper.  I'm not completely sold on it yet but it's not that hard to replace so I'm going to wait and see.

In any case, I just wanted to draw attention to the Flickr API and phpFlickr for anybody who might be trying to solve a similar problem.  They're incredibly powerful and so far I'm quite happy.

You can see my Flickr photostream here.

I'm not overly keen on the idea that Apple chose to close their platform to Flash developers (or even to Adobe and other third party tools providers) but at the same time Steve Jobs' public argument isn't entirely without merit.  Adobe's response has been pretty flaccid, in my view premised more or less on the idea that because lots of people use Flash, Apple should therefore support it.

Flash, in my experience, is actually not that well optimized for any platform and Adobe gives the impression that non-Windows platforms second class citizens.  Being a MacOS X/Linux user I probably see the whole argument through a slightly more jaded lens than your average Internet/iPhone user but I have experienced Flash crashing web browsers and my netbook (running Windows 7) only heats up and burns its battery off at a rapid rate when I hit heavy flash sites.

It's too bad that Adobe hasn't done a better job of integrating Flash, when the first apps and media players first hit the web I was pretty impressed.  But times have changed and the world of proprietary (and in particular) Windows/PC/x86 based tools on the web seems to finally be behind us thanks to mobile devices and Apple (as well as RIM) have been key players in this space.  The whole debate appears to me to boil down to a major clash in philosophies and interpretations of what the concept of "open platform" means.

I don't know if there's a "right" answer to this, but I'm sort of hoping that both sides stick to their guns and we get to see where the rest of the industry/public do.  My impression is that neither side will come out unscathed and I hope that this isn't a massive miscalculation on Apple's part because I'm quite concerned that this may be an ideological or profit driven move rather than a genuine effort to move mobile computing and HTML5 forward.  It's hard to tell the difference when Apple is no flock of angels and could very plausibly be basing their moves on either motive (or both).

The reasons are twofold. First I am subscribed to a large number of fairly active mailing lists which I find beneficial in both my private and professional life, rather than maintain multiple accounts on each mailing list service I find it easier to simply send this mail to one address and then filter and munge it there as appropriate. The second reason is that I don't need to expose my "real" identity anywhere and if I ultimately need to move to a new final delivery address this simplifies the situation. I know I can deal with this 10 ways from Sunday using procmail or crazy MTA-fu (which are still in place) but for various reasons I find that less than optimal.

In any event I am posting this simply to let people know about pobox.com which is a reasonably high quality service at a reasonably good price.

Despite the fact that I have very serious ideological and technical reservations about Google's collection of information and ad-driven revenue model, I continue to be a very heavy Google user because the service is just that good. The idea that Microsoft who has missed web technology several times and really only has a market share due to non-technical users, bundling and vendor lock-in can somehow salvage itself just by buying Yahoo! runs in the face of my personal impressions of their corporate culture and strategy. It's too bad really, Google needs competition not somebody to dismantle their only real competitor.

Here's a Slashdot article on the topic just for good measure.

I especially recommend January 22nd's Daily Show sketch on Iceland pulling out of the Iraq War.

The only downside to the streaming option is that you have to use Windows Media, but I've heard some rumblings that this may be changing in the not too distant future...