In his own special way, the always-provocative Mark Cuban throws down the gauntlet on bandwidth hogs:
When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.
If the choice is between your being able to download more movies or other video and my getting the best possible speed from my internet connection, I’m thrilled when you get kicked off. It can’t happen soon enough. Speed is what I need. Take all your P2P downloads and get the hell off my internet.
I have no sympathy for bandwidth hogs. You all are productivity killers for the rest of us. People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a Youtube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering.
Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.
Well, we’re not quite that hard-nosed about it here, but we’ve written a few things about broadband metering / tiering that you might find of interest: Drew, Cord, Ryan, and me (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Last week I noted how I struggled to get through a 5-day vacation without the Internet, blogs, e-mail and my other daily informational inputs. I was both trying to see if I could do it and also giving in to the pleading of my family, who had been asking me to stay away from the Net and electronic gadgets for at least one vacation.
Mark Glaser of MediaShift has taken it a step further and is experimenting with the idea of a “technology sabbath,” i.e., taking one day at week to relax and get away from technology to ponder or experience other things. Here’s how he explains it:
So, being that I am Jewish — though not very religious — I decided to shut down the computer each Friday night at sunset until Saturday at sunset, the traditional time of the Jewish Sabbath. I make exceptions when I need to get directions or check for a personal email. I still use my cell phone but try to limit it to personal calls only. While this day of technological rest can be a difficult routine, it has allowed me to stretch my time, spend more hours outside and be with people more in face-to-face settings.
And I’m not alone. The concept of a “Technology Sabbath” is becoming more widespread, both in religious circles and among bloggers and media people who are overwhelmed with the always-on nature of the broadband Internet and smartphones. And that overwhelming feeling is exacerbated by instant messaging, social networking and services such as Twitter, that allow us to do more informal communications electronically rather than in person.
Boy, I just don’t think I could do it. At least not on a set basis. Some weekends, mostly without even thinking about it, I don’t turn on my computer or any gadgets because I’m playing with the kids, busy doing home renovations, driving my sports car, or entertaining guests. But it’s still pretty rare for me to make it through the entire day–even on the weekend–without ever cracking open my laptop. Not sure I would be able to set aside an entire day on a regular basis to go techno-free.
Jamie Plummer points me to this story suggesting that Libertarian vice presidential candidate Wayne Allen Root is a patent troll. The patent looks like your typical software patent:
A method and apparatus for facilitating electronic commerce between suppliers of predictions and consumers of predictions. Suppliers provide their predictions on the outcomes of future events in one or more categories, and each supplier’s accuracy is tracked. Consumers interested in obtaining predictions for one of more of those categories are allowed to selectively choose which suppliers’ predictions they wish to view. The suppliers are compensated based on the number of consumers who view their predictions. In one embodiment, the consumers pay for the predictions that they view while the suppliers are paid a portion of the revenue obtained from the consumers. In another embodiment the consumers are not charged and all revenue is derived from advertisers. The system in accordance with the present invention includes a controller which automatically credits each supplier’s account, aggregates earnings for that supplier, and automatically sends an electronic pay order to the Federal Reserve’s automated clearinghouse to thereby facilitate payment.
I was already unenthusiastic about the Barr-Root ticket. This is another reason to be skeptical.
E-commerce advertising, meet sales tax. Sales tax, meet e-commerce advertising. And they are talking amongst themselves–in a New York court.
Last week Overstock.com filed a lawsuit against New York to overturn the state’s recently implemented sales tax law. Overstock’s suit is in addition to a lawsuit filed by Amazon.com, with both companies saying that New York’s law is unconstitutional and should be overturned.
Overstock’s complaint highlights the disconnect that regulators have with how technology creates new ways to drive business and enhance revenues. Overstock has affiliates, which are websites that contain a link to Overstock.com in exchange for the possibility of earning a commission from purchases made by those visitors who access the Overstock website form the affiliate’s website. New York says these websites, if in New York, are soliciting business sufficient to create a legal nexus for sales tax purposes. Overstock says it’s just advertising.
Here’s where technology makes it interesting. Overstock says:
- It can’t determine whether affiliates are actual legal residents of NY
- It doesn’t control the affiliate websites, and can’t determine whether a specific ad is a direct or indirect solicitation for business.
- Websites aren’t location specific. Are New York websites even soliciting New York consumers?
Continue reading →
As if on cue, I tried to follow a link to a citation to a document on the BEA website, and I got this helpful message:
The BEA Web site has taken on a new look and feel as part of a redesign.
It is understood that many users create ‘bookmarks’ or ‘favorites’ for their most frequently accessed pages on our site. However, due to some alterations to our directory structure, some ‘bookmarked’ URLs may no longer house the information they did prior to the redesign.
The links provided below will assist you in locating information within the new BEA site. Should you be unable to locate the information you want, please contact us at webmaster@bea.gov and let us know the web page you were looking for.
Now, the Technology Liberation Front has been hosted for the last four years by PJ Doland Web Design, a small web design company that you really should check out if you’re in the market for that sort of thing. We recently upgraded from Movable Type to Wordpress, and in the process we broke a lot of permalinks. Fortunately, PJ and his team whipped up a script to create redirects from each of our old posts to our new posts. That means that if anyone follows an old permalink, they’ll be silently redirected to the correct page.
Did I mention PJ did this for us for free? In contrast, I rather doubt the people who re-designed the BEA website did it for free. Setting up re-directs is a pain, but it’s not
that much of a pain, and especially for a site full of economic statistics, maintaining stable URLs ought to be a priority. If our volunteer webmaster can manage it for our insignificant little blog, somehow a federal agency should be able to manage the same feat.
In my latest piece for Ars, I write up the Princeton paper I pointed out on Monday, and also discuss Jerry’s paper on the same subject. The BEA’s less than spectecular web savvy nicely illustrates the point that governments should focus on providing data and leave the web design to the private sector.
William Patry discusses an important copyright issue:
…there were lengthy pubic meetings at WIPO…
The jokes write themselves.
Seriously, though, this ACTA business is bad news, for all the reason Patry enumerates.
What Tom said:
The Registered Traveler program, you might recall, is a fairly new initiative by which air passengers can pass through expedited security lines by paying a $100-ish yearly fee to one of several private firms that then run regular background checks. If enroll you pass through faster lines, and eventually you may be allowed to do things like keep your shoes on or your laptop in your bag. It’s meant for frequent travelers, and we, the public, are assured that the fees will provide additional lines and personnel — there should be no effect on those who don’t enroll.
This was not our experience. The young woman brought by the TSA employee was allowed to cut in front of us, and was then personally led through the security process like a blind baby kitten. That was irritating, but not a particularly large inconvenience — like I said, the lines weren’t long. But there also wasn’t much of a point to plopping that lady’s patrician ass in front of us and escorting her through — it probably made her feel special, and us less so, but nobody was saved or cost any meaningful amount of time. Still, if this is the system they use during busy periods, it really is going to make air travel worse for everyone who doesn’t pony up $100/year to gain entry into the program.
Now of course there’s nothing wrong with charging more for better service. But I think there’s at least a little something wrong when that service is a government-mandated barrier to travel, and more so when it’s one powered by secret lists and standards about which appeal is nearly or completely impossible. It also seems like a bad idea to give richer — and therefore more influential — passengers a way out of a system that, without some sort of opposing pressure, will inevitably become more and more irritating and inhumane as bureaucrats try to save their jobs by figuring out up ways to prevent plots that no one can anticipate.
It has crossed my mind that the liquid ban probably improves sales at concession stands inside the security perimeter. I’m not quite cynical enough to think that there’s a concessionaire’s lobby that pushed for the liquid ban, although I wouldn’t be shocked to learn some vendors are subtly encouraging TSA not to lift the ban.
But it’s much easier to imagine how a program like RT could be corrupted. The value of RT flows directly from the inconvenience imposed on non-customers, and revenue from the RT program apparently helps hire more TSA agents. So the net effect is to give the TSA both a vested interest in making the inspection process more obnoxious
and a cluster of private interests with the same incentives. If the revenues become significant, it’s not hard to imagine a revolving door between mid-level TSA officials and the private company who administer these programs.
And the point about opting out is the most important one, in my view. Our only hope of someday having a sane airport security system is that the system inconveniences a significant number of wealthy, well-connect people. If those wealthy, well connected people are allowed to buy their way out of the system, it will be that much harder to fix things.
Of course, the
really rich and influential people are flying on private jets, and not surprisingly, they’ve already arranged to bypass airport security entirely. So we may already be out of luck.
The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance represents a program of sorts, one designed to run on human brains and to output obedience. Like any program, however, the Pledge can suffer from bugs and submit to hacking. I thus offer you an upgraded Pledge, v. 2008:
I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statuory, with liberty and justice for all.
For the coder’s notes, click on over to
Agoraphilia.
As Jim has mentioned, Google stands accused of violating a California law that requires a website operator to “conspicuously post” a link to its privacy policy on its “home page or first significant page after entering the Web site” with the word “Privacy” in a larger font than the rest of the page’s text.
Are we not fortunate to have state laws that make it possible for customers to actually find website privacy policies? With all the billions of documents floating out there in the dark and mysterious pipes and tubes of the so-called “Internet,” how on earth would any simple user ever find the Google privacy policy if Google were not required by law to include an obvious link to that policy on its homepage? Some modern-day da Vinci would have to invent a technology that could magically index every single webpage in existence and let users find—or “search,” to use a classic science-fiction term—for that particular webpage by typing the words “Google privacy policy” and clicking a button.
Until such fantastic Jules Verne-style technologies are developed in some distant century, it is obviouslyvital that each and every state government develop its own requirement as to how website operators—especially those that purport to offer fantastic-but-as-yet-clearly-impossible “search” services—must clutter their websites’ homepages with links to information that no user could ever possibly find on his or her own with today’s crude technology.
Of course, even if such “search engines” (to coin an unlikely phrase) actually existed, the burden on consumers of typing seventeen (17!) letters—plus two (2) spaces and perhaps even two (2) more quotation marks for a total of up to twenty-one (21!) agonizing-to-type characters—would have to be reduced dramatically through some additional innovation or Esperanto-like simplification of the English language before we could reasonably expect that average consumers might be able to find privacy policies on their own without the benefit of California’s enlightened net-paternalism. Continue reading →
. . . in the communications world.
This recent TechKnowledge by James Plummer makes the case for more freedom in the use of the radio spectrum. This will bring more voices to the media marketplace, fostering competition and diversity in ideas and culture.
“Low-Power FM: Freedom is Diversity” concludes: “The FCC and Congress are both poised to further open up the FM spectrum. Both should ignore the pleadings of special interests on all sides as they do so. “
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.