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May 30, 2012

The next generation, smarter than ours

USA Today reports on the winning words in the National Spelling Bee over the last 8 decades.  It's clear that the last decade's students would have found many of the earlier winning words to be child's play.

Here is the list, as compiled by USA Today:

1925 gladiolus

1926 cerise

1927 luxuriance

1928 albumen

1929 asceticism

1930 fracas

1931 foulard

1932 knack

1933 torsion

1934 deteriorating

1935 intelligible

1936 interning

1937 promiscuous

1938 sanitarium

1939 canonical

1940 therapy

1941 initials

1942 sacrilegious

1946 semaphore

1947 chlorophyll

1948 psychiatry

1949 dulcimer

1950 meticulosity

1951 insouciant

1952 vignette

1953 soubrette

1954 transept

1955 crustaceology

1956 condominium

1957 schappe

1958 syllepsis

1959 catamaran

1960 eudaemonic

1961 smaragdine

1962 esquamulose

1963 equipage

1964 sycophant

1965 eczema

1966 ratoon

1967 Chihuahua

1968 abalone

1969 interlocutory

1970 croissant

1971 shalloon

1972 macerate

1973 vouchsafe

1974 hydrophyte

1975 incisor

1976 narcolepsy

1977 cambist

1978 deification

1979 maculature

1980 elucubrate

1981 sarcophagus

1982 psoriasis

1983 Purim

1984 luge

1985 milieu

1986 odontalgia

1987 staphylococci

1988 elegiacal

1989 spoliator

1990 fibranne

1991 antipyretic

1992 lyceum

1993 kamikaze

1994 antediluvian

1995 xanthosis

1996 vivisepulture

1997 euonym

1998 chiaroscurist

1999 logorrhea

2000 demarche

2001 succedaneum

2002 prospicience

2003 pococurante

2004 autochthonous

2005 appoggiatura

2006 Ursprache

2007 serrefine

2008 guerdon

2009 Laodicean

2010 stromuhr

2011 cymotrichous

 

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 30, 2012 at 11:46 AM in Globalization, Life | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 17, 2012

My New Paper, Just in Time for IPO: Facebookistan

Most of Facebook's users lie outside the United States, its home jurisdiction. In a new paper published this week, I examine how Facebook has been regulated across the world. Download here.  

Here is the abstract:

Who rules Facebookistan? Who makes the rules that govern the way a tenth of humanity connects on the Internet? The United States, France, China, or Mark Zuckerberg? Facebook represents a type of multinational corporation new to the world stage—one that raises issues different than those raised by earlier generations of multinational corporations. A review of international controversies involving Facebook reveals that Facebook has changed some of its policies as a result of pressures from governments around the world, while resisting other pressures. At the same time, Facebook has itself helped spur changes in the law, most evidently in helping undermine repressive governments. Ultimately, this Article finds that regulatory power is, de facto, dispersed across a wide array of international actors.

 

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 17, 2012 at 07:04 AM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 08, 2012

White House Issues Major Statement on Internet Policy

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued an important statement on Internet policy:

Members of the business community have expressed concern that some national governments seek to balkanize the Internet by establishing barriers to the free flow of information under the pretext of protecting cybersecurity, social stability, or local economies.  This is contrary to President Obama's vision of an Internet that is interoperable the world over, and the United States will vigorously oppose such barriers.  Further, these regulatory actions would create a confusing array of “local Internets,” establishing different rules for different places.  Firms may cease to offer services outside the country in which they are based if a variety of domestic regulations makes it too complicated or too costly.

The statement embraces a multistakeholder view of Internet regulation.

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 8, 2012 at 04:23 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

ICANN rakes in $350 million in fees

ICANN's decision to open up the domain name space to any possibility under any language produced, unsurprisingly, a large number of applicants.  

At $185,000 per application, ICANN said it is now sitting on an embarrassingly large cash pile of roughly $350m in application fees, much of which will be used to pay the programme's outside evaluators.

ICANN seems to plan to pay many outside experts to evaluate these applications.  Perhaps time for many Chander.com readers to become domain name experts.

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 8, 2012 at 04:12 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thinking about Internet Policy

The Guardian is running an important series on Internet policy:
 
This is an excellent series of highly topical articles on the current state and possible future directions of the Internet. In-depth pieces cover such subjects as social media, privacy, Big Data, intellectual property and the political use of the Net by both governments and activists.
The week of articles has the following themes:
The New Cold War
The Militarisation of Cyberspace
The New Walled Gardens
IP Wars
'Civilising' the web
The Open Resistance
The End of Privacy
In addition, some key thinkers and innovators give new interviews or talks. These include:
Other special features are an interactive map of government interference with the Internet, and Tracking the Trackers, a crowd-sourcing project using data supplied by users to get a better idea of who is behind cookies and web trackers and just how ubiquitous they are.
Hat tip: Erin Murphy.

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 8, 2012 at 01:07 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack