2 paths to a VoIP world

Clay Shirky has no doubt that VoIP services will be the future of voice-based communications, but points out that there are two divergent paths to getting there:

• Plan A merely moves phone calls onto the Internet and tries to change the existing telco business model from within;
• Plan B does a complete end run around the existing phone system and its business model.

Both will work but Plan A will take longer, Shirky says, because it makes VoIP companies vulnerable to obstructive regulations from the entrenched telco industry:

With their monopoly ending, incumbents have no choice but to embrace VoIP someday, because of the cost savings and the superior flexibility. However, they may succeed in significantly delaying that someday with the strategy of attacking their competitors through the regulatory system, while slowing their own deployment of the technology.

Plan B, however, is resistant to this strategy, because while it creates the same value as a phone call, it does so without any of the mechanics that regulation attaches to. No dialing, no phone numbers, no phones even, and, most ominously for the incumbents, no charge to the end user.

Middle-earth culture wars

As expected, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" cleaned up at the Academy Awards last night, winning a record-tying 11 Oscars. Coupled with the film trilogy's oliphaunt-sized box office grosses, all signs seem to suggest that J.R.R. Tolkien's epic (or at least director Peter Jackson's interpretation of it) still resonates with us today.

Steven Hart explores the reasons why at Salon. A big part of it is that you can read almost anything you want into Tolkien's mythic writings, and it seems like everyone has, from the radical left to the religious right; even co-stars Viggo Mortensen to John Rhys-Davies have weighed in on What It All Means.

When the book's original paperback editions became campus bestsellers in the 1960s, conservatives wrote it off as hippie-dippie pablum, an incense-scented ur-text of the New Age movement. Religious conservatives were suspicious of the book's popularity with rock groups like Led Zeppelin, and its connection to the seminal role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. But what a difference a generation makes! With "The Lord of the Rings" firmly ensconced in popular culture, Catholic theologians and evangelical activists alike are trumpeting the book's hidden Christian messages. As for the pundits, their successors are happy to claim a story in which good has blue eyes and resides in the West, while evil lives due east and has a really bad complexion. How's that for moral clarity?

A sinking feeling

		Meryl Schenker / P-I

Call them "accidental landmarks" -- those distinctive structures that add ineffably to a neighborhood's quirky character, even if the locals would rather that they were being quirky in someone else's backyard.

Spend just a little time in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square and it's hard to miss the neighborhood's most imposing accidental landmark, the parking garage that has been not-so-lovingly nicknamed the Sinking Ship.

As Kery Murakami reports today, many of its neighbors have long hoped that it would just go away. Well, that day is coming: Sound Transit plans to demolish the garage to make way for a new monorail station.

But in the "Be Careful What You Wish For" Department, locals are now worried about what will replace the Sinking Ship. Sound Transit doesn't need the entire lot and, by law, it can't really do anything with the leftover space, which neighbors fear will become a magnet for transients.

Top clicks, top picks

Reality, fantasy, perceptions, addictions and Passions -- that's what caught our readers' attention for the week of Feb. 23-29, 2004:

Top clicks (most read)

1. Gibson's 'Passion' leaves this critic uninspired
2. Seattle is closer to France than to Texas
3. Kalakala: The unwanted guest that won't leave
4. CD settlement checks -- and a note -- in the mail
5. 'Return of the King' Oscar-worthy? That'll be the day
6. Viggo Mortensen is a really nice guy (really!)
7. 'Survivor' Insider: Cagey play is dulling-down the game
8. Deck stacked against Asians; casinos play off gambling-intensive culture
9. Mariners Notebook: Garcia not expected to be a 'No.1 No. 1'
10. Costco sues the state

Top picks (most e-mailed)

1. Seattle is closer to France than to Texas
2. Gibson's 'Passion' leaves this critic uninspired
3. New Seattle Central Library is on the cutting edge of technological advances
4. Filmmaker examines fear of death
5. Viggo Mortensen is a really nice guy (really!)
6. Deck stacked against Asians; casinos play off gambling-intensive culture
7. Costco sues the state
8. Dog is found alive month after boat sinks
9. As gambling expands in state, so do problems
10. Dance theater's brilliance is the result of hard work