Four short links: 5 October 2009

Bozo Cloud Talk, Annotation Fail(ish), Python MySQL Slash, and Infinite Books

1. Brown Cloud Marketing -- advertorial "interviewing" GM of a company offering "DNS in the cloud". This might be a worthwhile service, but the way he markets it (by saying open source is "freeware" and the market leader is "legacy") reveals a rich vein of bozo. Freeware legacy DNS is the internet's dirty little secret (actually, it's the reason we have a functioning DNS), Nominum software was written 100 percent from the ground up, and by having software with source code that is not open for everybody to look at, it is inherently more secure. (security through obscurity is equating clothing with being naked yet blind). The Internet kindly did the poor man's homework: screenshot of a cross-site scripting vulnerability in their customer portal, a Nominum security advisory from 2008, and the Nominum web server is running Linux, Apache, and PHP (all legacy freeware yet apparently not the Internet's dirty little secret). (via Bert Hubert and Securosis)
2. Public Annotations on Healthcare Bill -- using technology from SharedBook, Congressman Culberson hoped to get citizens marking up the healthcare bill. They're using the software but many are just commenting on page 1--turning the hosted annotation platform into a forum with an odd user interface. It's a UI challenge: designing a way to let focused people comment on specific things, while also permitting impatient unfocused people to comment on the general topic. It's like asking for a SmartCar that seats 80. See also OpenCongress and their annotation system which also has hundreds of comments on the first few lines of the bill (including 39 on the one line "111th Congress"--apparently more contentious than you'd think!).
3. MyConnPy -- pure-Python MySQL client library, useful because it requires no C compilation to install (and thus can work on systems without C compilers installed, e.g. mobile). (via Simon Willison)
4. The Infinite Book -- design concept for an ebook reader (not a product you can buy yet). Sexy. (via Gizmodo)

ICANN without restraints: the difficulties of coordinating stakeholders

People interested in coalitions and policy-making on a global scale--topics that are increasingly relevant in a world whose borders are irrelevant to carbon dioxide, flu viruses, and other critical entities--need to learn from other organizations that are dealing with these issues. This week brings particularly important news about the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has been making policy for eleven years under a number of difficult premises:

• It was created hastily and arbitrarily without roots in the communities most interested in its mandate.
• Its concept of stakeholders is boundless, potentially involving anyone who uses the Internet or gets information that has passed at some point over the Internet.
• Its reach is global, and its decisions are affected by issues of language and culture.

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