- Infrastructure for Data Streams — describing the high-volume log data use case for Apache Kafka, and how it plays out in storage and infrastructure.
- Obama: Treat Broadband and Mobile as Utility (Ars Technica) — In short, Obama is siding with consumer advocates who have lobbied for months in favor of reclassification while the telecommunications industry lobbied against it.
- MozVR — a website, and the tools that made it, designed to be seen through the Oculus Rift.
- All Cameras are Police Cameras (James Bridle) — how the slippery slope is ridden: When the Wall was initially constructed, the public were informed that this [automatic license plate recognition] data would only be held, and regularly purged, by Transport for London, who oversee traffic matters in the city. However, within less than five years, the Home Secretary gave the Metropolitan Police full access to this system, which allowed them to take a complete copy of the data produced by the system. This permission to access the data was granted to the Police on the sole condition that they only used it when National Security was under threat. But since the data was now in their possession, the Police reclassified it as “Crime” data and now use it for general policing matters, despite the wording of the original permission. As this data is not considered to be “personal data” within the definition of the law, the Police are under no obligation to destroy it, and may retain their ongoing record of all vehicle movements within the city for as long as they desire.
"net neutrality" entries
Four short links: 11 November 2014
High-Volume Logs, Regulated Broadband, Oculus Web, and Personal Data Vacuums
Understanding network neutrality
Network neutrality is about treating all kinds of traffic equally — throttling competition equates to extortion.
I’d like to make a few very brief points about net neutrality. For most readers of Radar, there’s probably nothing new here, but they address confusions that I’ve seen.
- Network neutrality isn’t about the bandwidth that Internet service providers deliver to your home. ISPs can charge more for more bandwidth, same as always.
- Nor is network neutrality about the bandwidth that Internet service providers deliver to information providers. Again, ISPs can charge more for more bandwidth, same as always. You’d better believe that Google pays a lot more for Internet service than your local online store.
- Nor is network neutrality about ISPs dealing with congestion. Network providers have always dealt with congestion — in the worst case, by dropping traffic. Remember the “fast busy” signal on the phone? That’s the network dealing with congestion.
- Network neutrality is entirely about treating all kinds of traffic equally. Video is the same as voice, the same as Facebook, the same as Amazon. Your ISP cannot penalize video traffic (or some other kind of traffic) because they’d like to get into that business or because they’re already in that business. In other words: when you buy Internet connectivity, you can use it for whatever you want. Your provider can’t tell you what kind of business to be in.
Four short links: 31 July 2013
Mobile Image Cache, Google on Net Neutrality, Future of Programming, and PSD Files in Ruby
- How to Easily Resize and Cache Images for the Mobile Web (Pete Warden) — I set up a server running the excellent ImageProxy open-source project, and then I placed a Cloudfront CDN in front of it to cache the results. (a how-to covering the tricksy bits)
- Google’s Position on Net Neutrality Changes? (Wired) — At issue is Google Fiber’s Terms of Service, which contains a broad prohibition against customers attaching “servers” to its ultrafast 1 Gbps network in Kansas City. Google wants to ban the use of servers because it plans to offer a business class offering in the future. […] In its response [to a complaint], Google defended its sweeping ban by citing the very ISPs it opposed through the years-long fight for rules that require broadband providers to treat all packets equally.
- The Future of Programming (Bret Victor) — gorgeous slides, fascinating talk, and this advice from Alan Kay: I think the trick with knowledge is to “acquire it, and forget all except the perfume” — because it is noisy and sometimes drowns out one’s own “brain voices”. The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick.
- psd.rb — Ruby code for reading PSD files (MIT licensed).
FCC contest stimulates development of apps to help keep ISPs honest
The winners of the FCC's Open Internet challenge provide consumers with new tools to monitor ISPs.
The FCC Open Internet Challenge stimulated the creation of a new mobile application that enables consumers to analyze the performance of their mobile broadband network. Combined with the other two winners of the challenge, consumers now have better tools to measure their Internet service.
What lies ahead: Net Neutrality
Tim O'Reilly on the future of smartphones and the realities of net neutrality.
Tim O'Reilly recently offered his thoughts and predictions for a number of areas we cover here on Radar. In this segment he looks at the future of smartphones and he explains why the realities of spectrum capacity will shape net neutrality.
Steve Wozniak on the FCC and Internet freedom
For Steve Wozniak, the issue of an open Internet is personal.
After penning an open letter to the FCC on net neutrality, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made a surprise appearance at the Federal Communication Commission's public hearing on new open Internet rules.
Four short links: 13 December 2010
Mobile Clawback, Language Design, Gawker Hacked, and Science Tools
- European mobile operators say big sites need to pay for users’ data demands (Guardian) — it’s like the postal service demanding that envelope makers pay them because they’re not making enough money just selling stamps. What idiocy.
- Grace Programming Language — language designers working on a new teaching language.
- Gawker Media’s Entire Database Hacked — 1.5M usernames and passwords, plus content from their databases, in a torrent. What’s your plan to minimize the harm of an event like this, and to recover? (via Andy Baio)
- Macmillan Do Interesting Stuff (Cameron Neylon) — have acquired some companies that provide software tools to support scientists, and are starting a new line of business around it. I like it because it’s a much closer alignment of scientists’ interests with profit motive than, say, journals. Timo Hannay, who heads it, runs Science Foo Camp with Google and O’Reilly.
Four short links: 6 December 2010
.bas Scripts, Net Neutrality, Open Harrassment, and iOS Blog
- Apple I Basic as Mac OS X Scripting Language — great hack. The “apple1basic” executable is a statically recompiled version of the original binary. All code is running natively. It plugs right into UNIX stdin and stdout. You can pass it the filename of a BASIC program to run. You can run BASIC programs like shell scripts. (via Hacker News)
- How to Discredit Net Neutrality — the Level3-Comcast dispute isn’t as straightforward as you might think (or as I implied). Increasingly, advocates of net neutrality have pegged their case to a larger and more powerful role for FCC regulation in the internet industry. And thus the net neutrality debate, instead of focusing on developing new institutional arrangements to preserve internet freedom on BOTH the demand and supply side, descends into a replay of the early 1980s, Reagan-era punch and judy show between democrats and republicans, with one arguing for “more government” and the other for “less government.” Neither talking much sense about what the government should actually do. There’s a missing discussion here about competition preventing carrier abuses, competition that the US lacks.
- The Dark Side of Open Source Conferences (Val Aurora) — A good first step is for conferences and communities to adopt and enforce explicit policies or codes of conduct that spell out what kind of behavior won’t be tolerated and what response it will get. Much in the way that people don’t stop speeding unless they get speeding tickets, or that murder is totally unacceptable to most people but laws against it still exist, harassment at conferences may seem obviously wrong, but stopping it will require written rules and enforceable penalties.
- iDev Blog-a-Day — love the layout and the content’s good too.
Four short links: 30 November 2010
Git Library, Uncocked Open Data, Role of Editorial, and Network Neutrality Salvo
- libgit2 — a linkable git library. Ruby and Python bindings.
- Open Data: How Not to Cock It Up — Tom Steinberg lays it out.
- Algorithm and Crowd are Not Enough — My point isn’t that Google, Netflix, Amazon, Yelp or any of the others are doomed. But I do think there’s an opportunity brewing for entrepreneurs, websites and companies to add editorial components to the algo-crowd paradigm. O’Reilly’s business is built on editorial value, whether in book selection or conference creation. We obviously see a continued role for editorial presence. (via John Battelle on Twitter)
- Level 3 vs Comcast (Denver Post) — first shakedown from the carriers. Without mandated neutral carriers, the Internet will dissolve into a fiefdom of consolidated big players willing to pay the shakedowns of the telco goons.
The distinctions and controversies of net neutrality
A new wiki sorts out network neutrality's signal and noise.
"Network Neutrality: Distinctions and Controversies" appears to be the first disciplined attempt to distinguish the various definitions of network neutrality and the practices it is supposed to stop.