September 2009 - KICTANet

Release of Interisle and TNO reports on Root Scaling
by alice 21 Sep '09

21 Sep '09

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-18sep09-en.htm Release of Interisle and TNO reports on Root Scaling 18 September 2009 In February 2009, with Resolution 2009-02-03-04, the ICANN Board requested the Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC), the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), and the ICANN staff, including the IANA team, to study the potential issues regarding the addition of IDNs, IPv6 addresses, DNSSEC and substantial numbers of new TLDs to the root zone. The Terms of Reference for this study are at http://www.icann.org/en/committees/dns-root/root-scaling-study-tor-05may09-…. Interisle was selected to perform this study. In the course of their study, they recommended that a modeling effort be undertaken with the assistance of TNO. TNO produced a model and a companion report. We are hereby releasing the Interisle report as delivered for public comment and analysis as well as a covering note from the joint RSSAC/SSAC/ICANN staff steering group for this study. The steering group will be evaluating the report against the Terms of Reference and preparing recommendations for the Board and the public. The TNO model and simulation system is undergoing verification and will be released, with the TNO report, soon. Related links: Root Scaling Study http://www.icann.org/en/committees/dns-root/root-scaling-study-report-31aug… [PDF, 1,340K] Steering Group transmittal letter http://www.icann.org/en/committees/dns-root/steering-group-transmittal-lett… [PDF, 41K] The Root Scaling Study Steering Group David Conrad (david.conrad(a)icann.org) - ICANN John L. Crain (john.crain(a)icann.org) - ICANN Steve Crocker (steve(a)shinkuro.com) - SSAC Jeremy Hitchcock (jeremy(a)dyn-inc.com) - SSAC Johan Ihrén (johani(a)autonomica.se) - RSSAC Matt Larson (mlarson(a)verisign.com) - RSSAC Danny McPherson (danny(a)tcb.net) - SSAC Ram Mohan (rmohan(a)afilias.info) - SSAC Greg Rattray (greg.rattray(a)icann.org) - ICANN Barbara Roseman (barbara.roseman(a)icann.org) - ICANN Suzanne Woolf (Suzanne_Woolf(a)isc.org) - RSSAC

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Wainaina Mungai wants to share their location with you on Google Latitude
by Wainaina Mungai 21 Sep '09

21 Sep '09

Wainaina Mungai (wainaina.mungai(a)gmail.com) wants to start sharing their location with you on Google Latitude. You need to sign in to Latitude with a Google Account (eg, @gmail.com) and invite Wainaina Mungai. To get started, or to learn more about Latitude, click the link below. To get Google Latitude on your phone, click or type in the link below from your mobile web browser. http://m.google.com/latitude?dc=lati (c) 2009 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

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Fw: Information-rich and attention-poor
by Matunda Nyanchama 20 Sep '09

20 Sep '09

This is an interesting read in this time and age: of data and information glut. Enjoy Information-rich and attention-poor Peter Nicholson From Saturday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Saturday, Sep. 12, 2009 04:09AM EDT Twenty-eight years ago, psychologist and computer scientist Herbert Simon observed that the most fundamental consequence of the superabundance of information created by the digital revolution was a corresponding scarcity of attention. In becoming information-rich, we have become attention-poor. The three technologies that have powered the information revolution – computation, data transmission and data storage – have each increased in capability (and declined in cost per unit of capability) by about 10 million times since the early 1960s. It is as if a house that cost half a million dollars in 1964 could be bought today for a nickel, or if life expectancy had been reduced from 75 years to four minutes. This has unleashed a torrential abundance of data and information. But economics teaches that the counterpart of every new abundance is a new scarcity – in this case, the scarcity of human time and attention. The cost of one's time (approximated, for example, by the average wage) relative to the cost of data manipulation, transmission and storage has increased roughly 10-million-fold in just over two generations – a change in relative “prices” utterly without precedent. This, above all, is what is driving the evolution of online behaviour and culture, with profound implications for the production and consumption of knowledge. The primary consequence is the growing emphasis on speed at the expense of depth. Behaviour inevitably adapts to conserve the scarce resource – in this case, attention and time – and to “waste” the abundant resource. Thus, for example, much of the new technology's capability has been spent on simplifying interfaces and reducing communications latencies essentially to zero; both of these conserve precious time for users. The same motive has also spawned a plethora of indexing and searching schemes, of which Google is the chief example. These are all seeking to be attention-optimizers. Today's information technology is nowhere near its theoretical physical limits, though many engineering and cost hurdles may slow development after 2015. Nanotechnologies and quantum phenomena nevertheless promise to support a new growth path for decades to come. For example, a recently announced storage technology using carbon nanotubes may allow digital information to be held without degradation for a billion years or more – an innovation that would eliminate the major shortcoming of the digital archive. We may think metaphorically of the production of knowledge as a function of “information” and “attention,” with attention understood as the set of activities by which information is ultimately transformed into various forms of knowledge. By virtue of its unprecedented impact on the relative prices of information and human attention, information technology is driving a correspondingly profound transformation of knowledge production, the main feature of which is a shift of emphasis from “depth” to “speed.” This is simply because depth and nuance require time and attention to absorb. So as attention has become the dominant scarcity, depth has become less “affordable.” Moreover, with information so abundant, strategies are needed to process it more quickly, lest something of vital interest or importance is missed. THE 24-HOUR KNOWLEDGE CYCLE Knowledge is evolving from a “stock” to a “flow.” Stock and flow – for example, wealth and income – are concepts familiar to accountants and economists. A stock of knowledge may be thought of as a quasi-permanent repository – such as a book or an entire library – whereas the flow is the process of developing the knowledge. The old Encyclopedia Britannica was quintessentially a stock; Wikipedia is the paradigmatic example of flow. Obviously, a stock of knowledge is rarely permanent; it depreciates like any other form of capital. But electronic information technology is profoundly changing the rate of depreciation. By analogy with the 24-hour news cycle (which was an early consequence of the growing abundance of video bandwidth as cable television replaced scarce over-the-air frequencies), there is now the equivalent of a 24-hour knowledge cycle – “late-breaking knowledge,” as it were. Knowledge is becoming more like a river than a lake, more and more dominated by the flow than by the stock. What is driving this? Most obvious is the fact that the media by which electronic information is presented and manipulated permit it to be changed continuously and almost at no cost. Information products are therefore constantly evolving, for the simple reason that, faced with the option, who would not choose an updated over an outdated version? By the time information products eventually come to rest, they are very likely to be considered obsolete. In the cutthroat competition for attention, they are no longer “news.” Consequently, there is little time to think and reflect as the flow moves on. This has a subtle and pernicious implication for the production of knowledge. When the effective shelf-life of a document (or any information product) shrinks, fewer resources will be invested in its creation. This is because the period during which the product is likely to be read or referred to is too short to repay a large allocation of scarce time and skill in its production. As a result, the “market” for depth is narrowing. There is also under way a shift of intellectual authority from producers of depth – the traditional “expert” – to the broader public. This is nowhere more tellingly illustrated than by Wikipedia, which has roughly 300,000 volunteer contributors every month. The upshot is that thousands of heads working in parallel are, in an environment of information superabundance, presumably better than one, even if that one is an expert. What makes the mobilization of “crowd wisdom” intellectually powerful is that the technology of the Web makes it so easy for even amateurs to access a growing fraction of the corpus of human knowledge. But while hundreds of thousands of Web-empowered volunteers are able to very efficiently dedicate small slices of their discretionary time, the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell. Unfortunately for them, this has become a much harder sell because the ethic of “free” rules the economics of so much Web content. Moreover, the value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and stripped-down. The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds. The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon in rather parasitic fashion – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship. The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today's “cult of the amateur” will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge. With almost all of the world's codified knowledge at your fingertips, why should you spend increasingly scarce attention loading up your own mind just in case you may some day need this particular fact or concept? Far better, one might argue, to access efficiently what you need, when you need it. This depends, of course, on building up a sufficient internalized structure of concepts to be able to link with the online store of knowledge. How to teach this is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity facing educators in the 21st century. For now, the just-in-time approach seems to be narrowing peripheral intellectual vision and thus reducing the serendipity that has been the source of most radical innovation. What is apparently being eroded is the deep, integrative mode of knowledge generation that can come only from the “10,000 hours” of individual intellectual focus – a process that mysteriously gives rise to the insights that occur, often quite suddenly, to the well-prepared mind. We appear to be seeing fewer of the great synthetic innovations associated with names like Newton, Einstein or Watson and Crick. THE AGE OF DIGITAL NATIVES So we decry the increasing compartmentalization of knowledge – knowing more and more about less and less – while awaiting the great syntheses that some day may be achieved by millions of linked minds, all with fingertip access to the world's codified knowledge but with a globe-spanning spectrum of different perspectives. The hyperlinked and socially networked structure of the Internet may be making the metaphor of the Web as global “cyber-nervous system” into a reality – still primitive, but with potential for a far more integrated collective intelligence than we can imagine today. Those of us who are still skeptical might recall that Plato, in the Phaedrus, suggested that writing would “create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it.” This is a striking example of a particular kind of generation gap in which masters of an established paradigm can only see the shortcomings, and not the potential, of the truly novel. Today, the electronic screen, with its lack of linear constraint, its ephemeral scintilla and its hyperlinked multimedia content, portends a very different paradigm. How this may condition the habits of thought of the so-called “digital natives” – who, after all, are about to become both the custodians and creators of human knowledge – is one of the deepest and most significant questions facing our species. The challenge is to adapt, and then to evolve, in a world where there continues to be an exponential increase in the supply of information relative to the supply of human attention. Peter Nicholson is president of the Council of Canadian Academies --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day very difficult.” - E. B. White. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matunda Nyanchama, e-mail: matunda(a)hotmail.com Read my Blog: www.matunda.org Visit: www.aganoconsulting.com - for business information Other: www.nsemia.com ________________________________ Click less, mail more: Hotmail on the new MSN homepage!

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Global 'missed call' scam
by Wainaina Mungai 17 Sep '09

17 Sep '09

Hi I got a missed call from +423662691883 at 7:04am this morning. Being the paranoid Kenyan ;-) that I am, I first Googled for the country code and the result was "Liechtenstein". One of those coutries the skip on the map. I also learnt that the number has been used for a 'missed call' scam where you'd lose airtime and more. 1. Are our networks protecting consumers from such 'known threats'? 2. How does the scam work? Have a careful day, Wainaina -- Sent from my mobile device --- http://www.bungesms.com http://www.madeinkenya.org http://www.wainainamungai.com

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Let's build an Electronic Payment Solution!
by wesley kirinya 16 Sep '09

16 Sep '09

A couple of weeks ago, and a few months before that I talked about a payment solution for developers, basically a system where developers can receive payments from clients. Rad! had started the topic I commented on a few weeks ago. I believe that it's a great time now for us developers to do something about it. There are lots of great guys making great apps, especially mobile apps, but the methods that exist for them to receive payments are cumbersome for the client or the revenue share would not make business sense for the developer unless they are selling in the 10s or 100s of thousands. As I commented on Rad!'s thread, the payment solution is in-deed the last mile for us developers. With such a solution one can confidently build an app and plan for it's sale. I'm therefore putting the request out to all parties/developers interested. Is anyone willing to contribute to develop such a system. I belive we have some of the best developers spread out in our lists. We have the Security Guru's, the UI Gurus, Database Gurus, Software Architects, Designers and Programmers among others. And I'm sure those people know other people internationaly who can provide expert help. If we archieve this we could have a great open platform for payments. I had in mind a simple platform. It works the same way one would buy Mobile credit from the retail chains. It will be electronic. One purchases the amount they need, they send a request to the servers, through the Application (website, PC or mobile App). The application on the server deducts the amounts as they are used by the subscriber. I believe this system can generate enough revenue to sustain itself. The retail chain can pocket their 10 %, the system (and whoever is maintaining it) pocket another 10% and 70%-80% goes to the developer. Apple's Appstore pockets 30% while developer pockets 70%, that is great. One developer might have a client base of 5,000 for their app, but with 20 developers that goes up to 100,000. A developer would have access to the API to embed the payment solution in a website, mobile app, or PC app. I'm starting this thread for discussion into this venture. If the discussions are successful, let's make this a reality! If not, then I'll repost and repost until this idea makes sense, coz I'm yet to see how it doesn't. O_O

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WITSA Global ICT Public Policy Summit
by waudo siganga 14 Sep '09

14 Sep '09

Dear Colleagues, WITSA ([1]www.witsa.org) will be hosting the 2009 Global ICT Public Policy Summit ([2]www.gpps.bm) in Bermuda in early Novemebr. This international summit focuses on global policies affecting the ICT industry and is attended by over 500 senior executives, government officials and policy makers. Taking place once every two years and commencing in 1999, the summit is hosted in a different country each time, with the leading ICT association of that country organizing the event. In November 2009, GPPS will be coming to Bermuda with the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce’s Business Technology Division as the organizer in partnership with the Ministry of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce. The theme of the meting is "Business Technology: An Enabler in Your Economy" The 2009 Global Public Policy Summit focuses on global policies affecting the ICT industry and will be attended by over 500 senior executives, government officials and policy makers. The event will take place at the Fairmont Southampton in Bermuda on November 1-3, 2009. The event program will feature several thought provoking sessions, including: - Can Enlightened ICT Policy Enable Your Economy and an Economic Recovery? - Do Policies that Promote Technology Infrastructures that Are Resilient and Secure, and that Protect the Privacy of Personal Data Conflict with Policies that Encourage Economic Expansion? - Will Proposed Internet Governance Policies on the Stability, Security and Private Sector Leadership of the Internet Dampen Economic Recovery and Expansion? - Do Environmental Policies Hamper Growth and Can Enlightened ICT Policies and Involvement Bridge the Gap? - Is There Evidence that Institutions Can Play a Positive Role In Promoting ICT and Expanding Economies or Are They Simply Relics of the Past? - Are There Potential Business Technology Developments on the Horizon That Will Enhance Business Growth? In addition, there will be a [3]Pre-Summit Workshop entitled “Incubators as a Catalyst to Developing a Strong ICT Sector “ on October 30 and 31. Visit [4]www.gpps2009.bm for more information and Registration – Now! If you are in Kenya and you would like the CSK, which is a member of WITSA, to send an official invitation letter to your organization please do not hesitate to contact me. The total investment to atten dthhis meeting including return airfare, accomodation in the 5-star hotel and conference registration is about US$3000. Kind Regards, Waudo References 1. http://www.witsa.org/ 2. http://www.gpps.bm/ 3. http://www.gpps2009.bm/Schedule.aspx 4. http://www.gpps2009.bm/

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Commonwealth Internet Governance Forum Travel bursaries for the 4th IGF
by alice 14 Sep '09

14 Sep '09

Dear all, Find attached information about the Commonwealth travel bursaries for the 4th IGF. best Alice -------- Original Message -------- Details of the Commonwealth IGF and travel bursaries are attached for your information and can be found online on: www.commonwealthigf.org <http://www.commonwealthigf.org/> We would be grateful if you could disseminate the information through your networks.

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Re: [kictanet] Kenya: Consumers furious over high internet prices
by Bill Kagai 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Alex, Robert is apparently well known following emails I received from highly reputable people in the Human Rights sector where he last attacked. Through a bdix.net mailing list. You have opted to keep quiet about this. If you continue protecting his identity and he remains a member of your organisation, you ought to be ACCOUNTABLE as the chairman and let him face the full wrath of his RESPONSIBILITY. Otherwise, you are an accomplice. Don't mix the sad issue of Defamation today with Consumer Rights. I also want cheap internet. Also take heed, I do not represent Michael Joseph or any other person who faced attacks from Robert but I took responsibility to unearth the culprit as a proud Kenyan who is not ready to see one soul drive us into a destructive path. Unless you become bold and expose him, I am sorry I do not have anything good to say about you too and your organisation. Actually, I do not know what am doing in this list any more. Good bye....ALL. I can certainly get better things to do..... Bill On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Gakuru Alex <alexgakuru.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Bill, > > "The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, > you're still a rat."- Lily Tomlin. > I shall steer clear of the lowly races. > > inline responses, > > On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Bill Kagai <billkagai(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Alex, >> Don't beat around the bush. > > Bill = Impunity? Let's see.... > > But if you wish; > > 1) find out from your Safaricom friend where I was all day today. Ask > them for my mobile phone user location tracking and the days calls and > messages log to verify that indeed I had my handset on me all day. You > are aware that they all have all this huge amount of data(SMS, calls, > location, transaction, whom we call, when, conversation details etc ) > on all of our communications on their servers, right? We do not ask > for Data Protection bill aimlessly. > > 2) Indulge your investigations skills more- e.g. ask my neighbours if > I was at the location given unto you. > > 3) Go to Kenya Power and Lighting Company and ask them for their power > rationing program for today. And confirm whether indeed my location > had an outage. > > 4) I spoke with several respected senior personalities today who > needed data and information. Without power, I regretted, I could not > send them via emails. I am ready to give you their numbers for you to > confirm if indeed I told them so. > >> 1. Have you met Onyango Hatari in person?? >> 2. Do you have his contacts?? >> 3. Are you Onyango Hatari?? >> >> Call me....0724226600 we discuss this matter. We need to straighten >> this matter!!!! > > I shall not qualify or dignify your allegations with an honourable response. > > @Journalist: Anne-Marie Kinyanjui (and despite your disclaimer): > > Are you are qualified to advice us on consumer advocacy and > telecommunications investments? You wrote me an email asking for me > for data. What did you really want it for? > Whom does a journalist write for? See for "professional journalist" > here <http://tinyurl.com/john-pilger-video> > > I can send to kictanet the KBC and NTV News clips of the same Michael > Joseph interview, then all you can understand what I mean. Moderator > let me know I can do that? (~10MB). > > ---------- > Finally, > > My data-based analysis remains valid, until and unless Safaricom's > Michael Joseph offers verifiable proof on the contrary. Internet > prices have to come down, immediately! > > regards, > > Alex > >> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Gakuru Alex >> <alexgakuru.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> Bill, your remark as it stands right here borders on something already >>> illegal.... Please take note. >>> >>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Bill Kagai <billkagai(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>>> Ladies and Gentlemen, >>>> >>>> We are missing the point here. Clearly, 'Onyango Hatari' does not >>>> exist and is just a pseudonym for someone we know quite well on this >>>> list who prefers to spew hatred using a different email address. This >>>> matter in no longer on 'consumers' rights'. >>>> >>>> I would encourage Michael Joseph to report to the nearest police >>>> station for investigations to commence with a view of suing for libel >>>> because this is clear defamation. The Chairman of the ICT Consumers >>>> Association should be one of the respondents 'to assist police with >>>> investigations' since he seems to be the only one who knows the true >>>> identity of one Onyango Hatari. Or is there anyone in this list who >>>> has actually interacted with Onyango Hatari??? >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Bildad Kagai >>>> MD - MediaCorp Limited >>>> Nairobi Stock Exchange Authorised Information Vendor >>>> Suite B2, Tetu Court, State House Avenue >>>> P. O. Box 20311 - 00200 >>>> Nairobi, Kenya >>>> Tel. 254 20 272 8332 >>>> Fax. Rendered Obsolete >>>> S - 1°17'13.8" >>>> E - 36°48'22.7" >>>> www.mediacorp.co.ke >>>> --

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Kenya's ICT Policy development process
by Vanessa Malila 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Was hoping someone might be able to help. I am a PhD student at the University of Leeds doing my research on the ICT policy development process in Kenya - looking specifically at the role of the media and multi-stakeholder processes in the development of the 2006 National ICT Policy. I have been looking online for a copy of the draft ICT policy which was released in October 2004, but have not been able to find anything. Can anyone send me a copy or point me in the direction of where I could find one - if it is available electronically? I would really appreciate your feedback or help in this regard. Cheers, Vanessa Malila --------------------------------------------- Vanessa Malila PhD Student Institute of Communication Studies University of Leeds

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East African Fiber Summit
by aki 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Good morning, I'm a techie and a regular contributor on skunkslist. I'd like to add some contributions. Any views below are personal and not meant to cause any negative actions etc.. :-) I received an email attachment on the above subject detailing the program of the event. Though I'm not in a position to attend, I wanted to share my thoughts. After reviewing it, the program does not seem to hold much on what and where fiber should be heading in kenya. The program seems to revolve around a concept " when fiber arrives ". There are many excellent contributors on the program list and I hope that the summit will take things to much higher levels of discussion and focus on progress development through commitments. As I mentioned in my earlier contributions on other lists, Kdn and Safaricom ( including Onecom ) made history on July 27th. Safaricom took it further by holding event meetings for cyber owners outside Nairobi while Kdn was also able to push seacom packets all the way to the ugandan border. The summit should, in my view, present the strategies and solutions on offer based on techology, expansion and deployment of the fiber Nationally and across the border. This also brings me to my second point of contribution : TATA and Point of Presence in kenya : I was quite glad when recently TATA announced that they would be putting up a POP in kenya for tiered services. To have this pop in kenya was quite an important achievement and goes to show that Fiber will make Kenya a communications regional hub for the region. However, it has recently announced that TATA have gone with Access Kenya on this development. While I have nothing against any service provider or in this case Access Kenya, I believe that TATA have have made a disappointing start on the POP. As far as I know, Access Kenya does not at the moment represent itself as a National Operator nor does its services spread nationally nor across the border into Uganda or Rwanda. I'd have thought that TATA would be considering KDN, TKL or even Safaricom ( Onecom ) for its POP. I hope in future POP operators do realise the impact of their decisions. Corrections are welcome. Rgds.

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