February 2008 Archives

Broadband Reports claims that AT&T will be raising wholesale prices for the majority of ISPs (all except the largest) by 44 to 46 percent on May 16, ten days before Memorial Day.

If the other telcos do not follow suit and raise rates similarly, we'll see a huge disparity between AT&T areas that will have no competition, and Verizon and Qwest areas in which customers will have a choice of DSL provider.

BoingBoing is reporting that Comcast paid people to fill up seats in the hearing in order to block democracy. This is exactly the sort of behavior that will alienate consumers and allow the small ISPs to revive.

Save the Internet commented, "Comcast: blocking first the internet and then the public."

Update: more info at Open Networks Today.

Taking down YouTube within Pakistan: fine. Taking down YouTube worldwide by publishing one router table: serious problem. The details are here.

The call to action quote, in my opinion, is, "We had a similar event at an ISP I worked for in 1998 (YES, a decade ago)--obviously, nothing has changed regarding this extremely fragile and vulnerable piece of Internet infrastructure since that time."

Ryan Paul of Ars Technica nails it when he writes, "It is unclear why the DOJ and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are illegally starting new surveillance under the terms of an expired law when adequate and legally permissible alternatives, like the conventional FISA program, exist."

Brad Templeton is a source of good ideas, such as his essay Proper principles for Challenge/Response anti-spam systems.

Today, he takes on virtualization.

Good for the regulator! But will the telco, once again, get away with ignoring the law?

This is one to watch: GigaOM reports that new software (no companies named yet) will take virtual machines and ensure that they're running on the same server.

I find this confusing because:

1) I thought the point of virutalization was to use the unused fractions of servers in other applications

2) To get better servers by connecting these pieces of different servers together

but

3) Now we're taking these pieces of different servers and putting them all on the same machine and then . . .

? 4) Moving the original applications to another machine?

How much bandwidth and CPU time is used in moving these applications around?

Would it be better to . . . not virtualize at all?

I just don't understand.

Is this going to be one of those trends where we veer back and forth between virtualization and consolidation? Maybe we should just put everything on one big computer . . . or perhaps a cluster?

The New York Times reported this weekend that an ISP sent the FBI e-mail from an entire domain instead of from the one mailbox that the FBI requested.

The article claims that this is both unusual and unnoticed, writing:

"The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect."

I suspect the opposite. All too often it seems easier to send more data than less (as in the notorious British government case) but doing so is not helpful to law enforcement and could expose the ISP to liability for transmitting personal information not covered by a warrant.

With the U.S. House of Representatives deciding not to pass a bill on telecom immunity today.

John Conyers said, "I have not seen anything that leads me to believe, as the President seems to believe, that providing amnesty to these companies [telcos] is a more compelling public interest than our Constitutionally protected right to privacy. We must maintain our civil liberties and give the government the tools it needs to collect intelligence information, but I do not believe telecom amnesty is necessary in order to accomplish that goal."

After reading this article, you'll recommend that your friends not join.

Update: The NY Times is now reporting that leaving facebook is easier. It would be nice to also be able to dump individual facebook apps. I find I'm simply not adding new apps.

This one's from Fark. It's a simple matter to prove that you were in a funeral procession when you went through the red light -- but very difficult to get the ticket dismissed.

"the city told Verissimo to "contact the customer service department of American Transportation Systems," the company that processes the red-light camera tickets.

That company sent Verissimo right back to the city."

This story has everything -- the perils of outsourcing, the perils of poorly conceived automated systems, and, once again (see Take Responsibility for your Security Policies) bureaucracy providing errors without accountability.

BoingBoing is justifiably proud of being noted on David Byrne's blog, and justifiably irked at the reason: the blog is blocked at Denver airport.

BoingBoing contributor Xeni Jardin says that the problem is the filtering software:

"SmartFilter isn't very smart. Secure Computing classifies any site with any nudity--even Michaelangelo's David appearing on a single page out of thousands--as a 'nudity' site, which means that customers who block 'nudity' can't get through."

Start with the news story (H/T BoingBoing):

A 23-year-old woman is expected to appear in court today after reports of a bomb on a North Sea oil rig sparked a full-scale emergency operation involving the army, RAF and police.

According to one report, the scare started when a woman employee on the rig was overheard recalling a dream she had had about a bomb on the platform.

So the entire national security apparatus of Great Britain, including its air force, army, and major oil company, sprang into action because a woman was overheard describing her nightmare.

People need to think before they act, but when afraid, when terrorized, often fail to do so.

As usual, the reporting from GigaOM is excellent. The latest news in the auction is that the "D" block spectrum failed to attract a decent bid, in part because Frontline Wireless failed to obtain sufficient investment.

While the FCC wants to blame insider dealing, a simpler explanation is obvious.

The Economist has an interesting story about how a pre-internet technology, the telex, is being kept alive by companies that use it as a secure version of the internet with an extremely low data rate and high exlusivity.

This higlights several things:

1) The internet can allow you to do things you could not do before.

2) Security still prevents even some elementary applications from going full IP.

3) The internet can be used in conjunction with other technologies to do things that the internet cannot.

All of this should be obvious, but the story, linked above, is not. Worth reading!

On GigaOM today, Nitin Borwankar lists four basic data property rights he'd like to see granted to users of online applications.

Borwankar writes, "Having been in the data business since the early 90s, it’s clear to me that data portability is a non-solution to a non-problem, a storm in a teacup, an emperor with no clothes."

He's absolutely right. This sort of service improvement is exactly what every independent ISP should focus on.

Gordon Cook's fertile list of experts explore recent pronouncements from China concerning something the government is misleadingly calling "IPv9".

The Chinese government appears to want to do several things at once:

1) Enable Chinese characters in domain names

2) Create a whole new kind of premium (i.e., short) domain names -- the China Central People's Government portal has "12345"

3) Tie all activity on the web to MAC address