Open letter to The Pink'un: you were snowed

Dear FT editors,

Your January 4th editorial, Surfers should pay congestion charges, made painful reading.

The Network Neutrality debate isn't centred on the ability to buy preferential access to to the Internet. This is a canard floated by parties with an agenda to muddy the waters and obscure the real debate.

The real issue is to prevent vertically-integrated media companies from exercising unfair competition.

Imagine an ISP who's parent company also owned a competitor to Skype, the popular Internet phone service. Network neutrality regulations would seek to prevent that ISP from selectively reducing the quality of service between Skype users.

It has little or nothing to do with CDNs, "selling access to special fast lanes" or "preventing the market from rationing a scarce resource."


Yours sincerely,
Richi Jennings.

GWAVACon: BrainShare alternative for Novell collaboration community

Are you a Novell GroupWise, ZENworks, or Teaming customer? Are you disappointed that Novell canceled the BrainShare event?

Do you know about GWAVACon? Since 2005, this conference has been focused on the Novell collaboration community. GWAVACon has been held in Dallas, Sydney, San Diego, Munich, and Berlin. This year the U.S. event will be held in Las Vegas: January 25-27.

The events get strong support from Novell and other vendors in the Novell ecosystem. This year the keynote will be given by Juan Carlos Cerrutti, a Novell Vice President. RIM is a key sponsor.

I'll also be speaking at the event (so it's not all sunshine and roses). Many thanks to Richard Bliss for the invitation.

The organizers have three attractive incentives for people to come along:

1. For those who were attending BrainShare in Salt Lake City, the early-bird deadline was extended to January 8th. This is a $200 discount (but only until January 8th, so move fast).
2. For those who had already booked flights to Salt Lake City, GWAVACon is offering a discount equal to the airline change fee for those switching flights from SLC to Las Vegas.
3. For $1695 all expenses are paid. This includes airfare, hotel, and food. This is great for those that have budget for "training" but not for "travel". It includes everything for a single price that's slightly less than a BrainShare pass. (Offer is for those coming from the U.S. only.)

Of course, you can't combine these offers, so choose which one works for you best.