WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Well, I’m back, refreshed and dynamic with pieces on net neutrality, French three strikes law, demolitions, MIT students, Microsoft, patents, real names, super-resolution photo filters, 3D printers, and miniature electromechanical artwork.
That leaves another 26 items that didn’t make it into the newsletter this week. <Sigh> I guess you can’t win them all. So, let’s go...
Analysis: Net Neutrality - A Data Packet For All Seasons
‘Internet Neutrality’ is a phrase which had been much bandied around in recent times - usually by people with only the vaguest idea of what they are talking about. So, OK, bottom line, net neutrality is the idea that when you log on to the net, you pay your provider (aka ISP) and then you should be able to look at anything you like (that’s legal), with nothing given preference over anything else.
Sounds good. So what are the fundamental problems? It’s that an ISP is a utility, just like water or electricity. Therefore there isn’t very much opportunity to make vast quantities of money or expand. Consequently, the providers, who in many areas have a monopoly, frequently as a result of buying out their competitors, keep coming up with wizard wheezes to make more money. These range from charging their customers tiered payments for different types of media, like video, or peer-to-peer (e.g. bit-torrent), through to charging the people who provide material on the net for the privilege of having it travel through you providers network.
Over the last few year the regulators have started to come to grips with the other serious problem caused by ISPs - egregious claims of ‘up to’ XX amount of bandwidth, where XX is the theoretical (and unreachable) bandwidth of the link between your dwelling and the nearest provider access point. No one ever gets the full amount and few people get anywhere near the limit. The regulators are now starting to deal with this. They are however, only just starting to get to get a handle on net neutrality.
Thus it was that I was interested to read an article by industry analyst Dean Bubley about real net neutrality. He quotes the UK regulator’s take on this approvingly:
“In particular, if ISPs offer a service to consumers which they describe as ‘internet access’, we believe this creates an expectation that this service will be unrestricted, enabling the consumer to access any service lawfully available on the internet. As a result, if a service does not provide full access to the internet, we would not expect it to be marketed as internet access.”
Dean’s suggestion is that ‘Internet Access’ should be a protected brand name like the French wine growers “Appelation Controlee”. In that case you can’t call a wine “champagne” if it doesn’t come from the Champagne Appelation Controlee growing district. In our case you shouldn’t be allowed to call a service “Internet Access” unless it is guaranteed not to differentiate between different types of data coming into your router.
One of the nice parts of this is that it wouldn’t stop the ISPs offering additional, or alternative, services optimized for specific applications. For instance if your main use is net telephony, they could sell you a service optimized for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). But - and this is the crucial point, they would not be allowed to sell that service as ‘Internet Access’, because ‘Internet Access’ can only be used for an undifferentiated service.
I think this is definitely the way to go. Of course, it won’t be as simple as it sounds. Internet networks are not just a bunch of ‘pipes’ carrying data packets, they are a complex beast with characteristics more akin to a giant distributed supercomputer specialized for copying data than, say, an electrical distribution network (but that’s another story). The details need to be worked out, no two ways about it, and it won’t easy. However, this is the best take that I’ve seen yet on an issue which affects all of us, and needs to be resolved in the near future.
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/uk-net-neutrality-moving-towards-right.html
Shorts:
Ahoy me mateys! No, it’s not whinge like a pirate day. There is however some interesting news for BitTorrent users in France. The Culture Minister, Aurelie Filipetti has been looking through the legislation inherited from her predecessor, and she is not impressed by the ‘Three Strikes’ Anti-Piracy law. Characterizing it as too expensive, she also describes internet disconnections as being disproportionate, and notes that the agency set up to police the law had failed to deliver legal content.
Could it be that the media companies have been making electoral contributions to the wrong people, as a result of which common sense is starting to grip politicians the world over?
http://torrentfreak.com/three-strikes-anti-piracy-budget-too-expensive-to-justify-says-minister-120603/
You know, there are few things more satisfying than watching a real expert at work. I love work, I could sit and watch people working all day... But my favorite experts have got to be demolition experts. So to get your Sunday off to a thundering good start, here are two videos of the best demolitions I’ve seen in a long time. The first is the 17-storey Grand Palace Hotel in New Orleans being demolished in ten seconds. If you think that’s fast then take a look at the second video which is the Fort Steuben Bridge in Ohio being demolished in a mere -six- seconds! Now that’s what I call good work.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18965252
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/17142842
Do you think state run lotteries are safer, and fairer, than other types of lotteries? Think again. The NY Daily News has just reported on a Massachusetts State Lottery scam by MIT students that netted US$8 million. According to a report by State Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, the lottery officials knew about the scam in 2005, but they’ve only just stopped it! I’m no legal expert, but even if there is no law against what the students did, continuing to run the lottery knowing that it was compromised, must at least be fraudulent.
What is it about MIT students and gambling? In the ’80s and ’90s a group of them took a bunch of Las Vegas Casinos for millions of dollars, now they’ve moved closer to home. Must be something about the teaching, I guess.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/mit-students-scammed-massachusetts-state-lottery-8-million-report-article-1.1128482
Microsoft is not having a good time. Bill Gates’ timing for when he got out was absolutely impeccable. Ever since around 2000 it has fallen flat on its face with every new product it has launched. With the new Windows 8 winging its way to the manufacturers, can they recover now? The omens are not good. A lot of large businesses are still struggling to upgrade from XP to Windows 7. The Vista debacle has proved that it is possible to skip an upgrade without any ill effects - a scary thought for Microsoft. And then there is Metro, the new interface for Windows 8. it’s completely different and either brilliant or (expletive deleted) depending on your view.
But now there is another bump in the road to Windows 8. The name Metro. It’s a pretty generic name, and for some reason not explained, Microsoft is downplaying the name after originally launching it with a lot of razzmatazz. Could it be that they failed to check out whether someone else was already using the name? Microsoft has always taken a strong line on defending its trademarks, while taking a cavalier attitude to other people’s trademarks. Sounds to me like they got bitten on the backside over this one. Of course I could be wrong...
In the mean time, for those of you who end up with Windows 8 on your new computer, and want the familiar ‘Start’ menu back (you know, the one you use to stop the machine...), I suggest you take a look at Stardock’s ‘Start8’ application. I haven’t used it, but it seems to be getting plenty of good press.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/30/browsium_win_7_up_hill_task/
http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/death-of-the-metro-brand-windows-8s-latest-flub-199298?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2012-08-03
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57485715-75/is-metro-now-a-banned-word-at-microsoft/?tag=nl.e703
http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
Homework:
If you think the system of patents is not hopelessly flawed, you need to take a peek at a recent short slide show put together by Infoworld. The gems portrayed include patents granted for hair comb-over, basmati rice, and playing laser tag with the cat...
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/58333/patent-7-preposterous-claims-198734?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2012-07-27#slide1
For some time now attempts have been made by the big social media companies to stop abuse of comments by enforcing real name policies. I first came across this on Google’s G+ when a work colleague had his account frozen because he used the name by which he was commonly known on the net. I see that YouTube has now joined the club, in an effort to cut down on flame wars and trolls.
It doesn’t work, as they should know, because there is plenty of anecdotal evidence around, and there are also real figures that prove it. In 2007 South Korea mandated that all websites with more than 100,000 viewers should require real names. It didn’t work. A study revealed that it only reduced unwanted, abusive, and malicious comments by an estimated 0.9%, and the policy was scrapped.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
Are you a digital photography buff? Then you may like to take a look at a new process developed by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science. It’s called super-resolution and it makes Photoshop sharpen filters look like old hat. Take a look at the article - it gives you all the information you are ever likely to need about the process. And the results look pretty impressive to me.
http://www.gizmag.com/super-resolution-weizmann-institute/23486/
Geek Stuff:
A couple of snippets on 3D printers for you this week.
The first is a report that a firearms enthusiast called ‘Have Blue’ used a 3D printer to build an AR-25 class assault rifle. Some parts for the rifle were bought on line, but the most important part, called the lower receiver, was built up in the printer using 3D CAD files. Why is this the most important part? Because it’s the part that you need a gun license to buy. And the gun works as well. Gulp!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/30/3d_printed_assault_rifle/
The second is a report of the first ‘portable’ 3D printer. Well, perhaps like early portable computers, ‘luggable’ would be a better description - it fits into a small suitcase. Most 3D printers are definitely not easily movable, but that may have ended with the PopFab, invented by MIT students. So at least we now know what MIT students are doing when they are not engaged in making millions from dubious gambling ploys. In the meantime, given the previous geek story, I suspect you will be required to check any luggage that includes a portable 3D printer!
http://www.gizmag.com/popfab-3d-printer-fits-inside-a-briefcase/23575/
On a totally different subject, if you like miniature mechanical toys you have to take a look at Szymon Klimek’s artwork. It’s beautiful and all the items are completely detailed. I particularly liked ‘SPONGE’, a solar powered engine that fits into a wine glass. Brilliant!
http://www.gizmag.com/klimek-miniature-electromechanical-artwork/23469/
Scanner: Other stories
Accused movie pirate sues for defamation and millions in damages
http://torrentfreak.com/accused-movie-pirate-sues-for-defamation-120723/
Court demands TSA explain why it is defying nude body scanner order
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/nude-scanner-order/
Valve boss Gabe Newell calls Windows 8 a ‘catastrophe’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18996377
Valve: Games run FASTER on Linux than Windows
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/valve_games_faster_on_linux/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
5 August 2012
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
