DISQUS

Adam, I've done it. Inspired by your list, I posted mine here: http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2008/07/...

We overlap on Led Zeppelin, Dark Side of the Moon, Achtung Baby, and Urban Hymns. I was glad to see Miles Davis on your list in 1970, but that year I went with a different jazz favorite, Stanley Turrentine's Sugar. If I could go all the way back to 1959 I would definitely choos Davis' Kind of Blue for that year.

I was very tempted by Stop Making Sense in 1984, but honestly I played REM's Reckoning a lot more often that year. I liked the Replacements back then, too, but not enough to top the list.

I'm going to enjoy checking out some of your favorites that I haven't explored yet. Thanks for the list.

Very cool list, Adam. Now you've got me going, and I'll be up til 2 am some night in the near future completing my own list. Excellent choices, by the way, and a few I don't know so now I know what I missed and need to check out.

Well put, Tim. The only one of the four freedoms of 'Net Neutrality that seems worthy of enforcing is the requirement to disclose your network management (traffic shaping/blocking) policies. Existing truth-in-advertising laws may already require this, under a broad interpretation, and it is the FTC's job to enforce (rather than the FCC's job as considered in the proposed Markey legislation). The Markey law is ill-considered. Thankfully, I don't think it has good prospects to pass in an election year. More at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2008/02/...

Very cool geek humor, thanks for sharing. Happy New Year Tim.

Tim, this is an excellent post, and thanks for drawing attention to the topic. Thanks, also, for your comments on my blog regarding the question of whether software should be patentable.

I have posted on the blog in response to your comments there, comparing software to music. Music is not patentable, of course, while software is patentable. Imagine if music were patentable, though. Would we have been deprived of many great musical works due to the temporary monopoly granted for certain musical forms? I fear that would have been the case, and it supports the idea that we should not have allowed software to be patentable.

More on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/12/...

Good post, Mr. Gattuso. Of course AT&T; controls over 30% of the wireline consumer and business telecom markets in the US, but there are no market share caps there. Martin's double-standard is showing again. More on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/12/...

I object to legislation like Markey's because it ties the network operator's hands with respect to providing the service that the market demands. Let's look at one shining example: the VoIP services offered by cable operators. For many years now, these services have used the PacketCable and DOCSIS standards to provide priority to to VoIP packets over the rest of the best effort Internet traffic on the cable network. The cable industry developed these standards for two big reasons: to provide a consistently high-quality voice service to their subscribers, and to avoid investing in antiquated and expensive circuit switching equipment to provide those voice services. In other words, they were trying to compete with the telcos with a service of roughly equal quality and they found a cheaper and more advanced way of providing that service at lower cost than the legacy telco solution. And yes, the cable company charges extra for the voice service. Do we really want to tell the cable company that they can't prioritize their voice packets any more? Of course not.

More on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/12/...

Mr. Haney, your view of competitive local exchange carriers are "mere retailers who can only offer the incumbents’ services under a different name" is dangerously one-sided and out of touch with reality. Yes, there are CLECs that only resell at lower prices the same products that the ILECs sell. I have to point out, though, that there are also CLECs that sell innovative new services that add value to the basic services they are purchasing from the ILEC. As an example, I offer CBeyond (www.cbeyond.com), a fast-growing CLEC offering innovative VoIP and data services in nine major metropolitan areas, and with a market capitalization of $1.2B. Do we really want to cut off the oxygen from these kinds of up-and-coming service providers by suspending the requirement for ILECS to re-sell T1s and DS-3s? More on my blog at www.ikeelliott.com

Right on. Mr. Martin has an agenda and he is intent on pursuing it even if the Cable Act doesn't support his actions. He might wish there was a 70-56 rule, but there isn't one, and until congress passes another Cable Act with a 7-56 rule, I think Martin is on thin ice if he tries to extend the FCC's power to further regulate Cable. I posted on this on my blog a few days ago, at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/11/...

I agree with Adam's post, and am skeptical that cable regulation will achieve the lofty goals of which FCC Chairman Martin speaks. I also question whether the FCC has a legislative mandate to pursue its regulatory agenda in the cable industry, based upon its loose interpretation of the 70/70 rule in the 1984 Cable Act. I find it ironic that the FCC is looking to include fiber-optic telco subscribers in its count of cable subscribers in order to reach the 70% threshold it needs in order to regulate cable. Using evidence of competition to regulate seems like a big stretch to me. More on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/11/...