Washington Post: Cable Firms Faulted For Restrictions On Internet Service. With the Bush administration deciding that the issues should be settled at the FCC and not through legislation, the agency has become a lobbying locus. More than 80 filings from industry and consumer organizations were received on the topic of cable-modem service alone. [Tomalak's Realm]
I'm glad someone is starting to take notice of the Accepable Use Policies and the many restrictions that the cable companies place on Internet users. The biggest problem with these restrictions is that they severely limit innovation. Ultimately, this hurts the cable companies, because they really need a killer app to drive subscriber growth.
The Internet is all about computers being connected to each other and about the tremendous value that results from that connectivity. Unfortunately, I believe the cable companies -- actually most big technology companies -- take a slightly different view: the Internet is about providing various services to consumers who use PCs.
A guy on Slashdot posted an interesting message about how he uses his always on Internet connection. His computer apparently has the ability to pick up the caller ID of his incoming phone calls. He uses a web browser, from work or from wherever he happens to be, to connect to the computer in his home and check the caller IDs of those who have called. That's a truly innovative idea! While you're away, you can check back to the house and see who has called since you've been away! That's exactly the kind of innovation that is prohibited by the restrictions placed by Comcast and other cable companies. I have often envisioned a personal HTTP server, password protected, that allows one to install various plug-ins that provide interesting services via an always-on Internet connection. Checking your caller ID logs is just one such service. With such a server running, you could also check your new or stored email or your voice mail (stored on your hard drive). You could check that your home security system is operating correctly and has not been breached. You could store your files that you work on while on the road (WebDAV would be good for that). You could set up a mirroring/peering system with friends or relatives that encrypts important files on your computer (and all your peers' computers) and duplicates them to the hard drives of all your peers -- a kind of transparent backup system. All of these possibilities are prohibited by restrictions placed by the cable modem ISPs.
Dylan Tweney: Broken trust. The problem is that Palladium requires users to place a huge amount of trust in Microsoft. You don't get to decide what runs on your computer -- Microsoft does. You can't even open files unless you've been authorized by Microsoft, or by a third party. [Tomalak's Realm]
Many individuals are starting to take a look at Microsoft's Palladium. I guess corporations are going to love it. But the opposite is true for individuals.
If I understand Palladium correctly, it's about allowing certain system privileges for only trusted code. This is a good idea. It has been the standard operating procedure on Unix systems for decades. On Unix systems, there is a privileged user account (root) and there are non-privileged users accounts. By using a non-privileged user account for all computer activities except system administration, Unix users maintain some degree of safety. Why hasn't Microsoft adopted this idea? To some extent they have, but not for home users. Now they want to make a distinction between privileged code and non-privileged code, but they want to do this in a very heavy-handed way, even involving the hardware. I don't understand why they feel that hardware has to be involved, unless they feel they need to convince Hollywood and other interested parties that the system is so secure that even the computers' owners can't break the security.
I think that we as computer owners feel that we should be able to choose who we trust and who we don't trust. In particular, I think we should be able to trust ourselves. But part of Palladium is the idea that a computer's owner can't be trusted.
We want safer computing, but what about the alternatives to Palladium. Windows XP Home Edition does not allow file shares to be password protected. That is not a good idea in an increasingly connected world. Another way to achieve safer computing is to treat program code and data separately. Microsoft has allowed code and data to merge, through VBA code in Microsoft Office documents and through Active Scripting (Javascript, VBScript) in HTML documents. If we had separation of code and data, then we would only have to be sure that the applications (the code) were trusted, and we could open any data file. But when code and data are merged, it's no longer safe to open a data file, because it may contain dangerous code. Emacs is a good example to look at, because emacs got it right. Emacs allows customization through user-written program code (macros), but the macros come separate from the data files, and there is a separate step in which the macros are installed.
Microsoft's proposed palladium demands comment. Read about it in this article. Or read the comments about it from the Register.
So, here's my comment: Palladium is fatally flawed, and it will never succeed. Why? The current situation of our computers and the Internet demands mutual distrust. That's a very good thing. It's true that newbies tend to be trusting, but it's part of one's computer and Internet education to learn to be suspicious. Palladium is a radical change; it departs from mutual distrust to complete trust. A world of complete trust is an entirely new world. Anything that would have an impact on trust must be carefully controlled. It's that need for control that will cause the technology to be rejected.
This view of the Web is so prevalent:
Big Companies = producers
Individuals = consumers
You can sense that view in this article [Can Broadband Save Online Media] currently running on news.com. Almost every article that discusses broadband Internet takes this view. What's missing is this view:
Individuals = producers
or this view:
Individuals = users
Consider the conditions attached to most broadband Internet service plans offered to homes by cable companies or phone companies: they don't allow individuals to run "servers." Presumably, that prohits peer-to-peer applications. Which is funny, since the next "killer app" for broadband could very well be a peer-to-peer application. By placing those kinds of restrictions, the cable and phone companies are working to inhibit large-scale adoption of their broadband Internet service.
Yahoo to give home page a makeover. After holding on to the same basic framework for seven years, the Web portal is hoping to court advertisers with a redesign, according to sources. [CNET News.com]
Alas, poor Yahoo. I don't use Yahoo anymore. I used to use Yahoo frequently. They were different from their competitors Excite, Lycos, and others I can't remember now, because they had the most complete and easy to use directory. I think they would have done much better to stick with a business focused on a directory. They could have done that without the conflict inherent in a business that also offers it's own content. But in the late 1990s, it was the popular thing to do to acquire lots of other web companies, which is what Yahoo did.
There is an alternative to Yahoo's directory. It's the Open Directory Project.
I opened a new project on SourceForge. It's called MAIF -- Mail Archive and Interchange Format. The idea is to promote a standard file format for email archiving and interchange that is simple, yet overcomes some of the problems with the Unix mbox format or other similar formats. Another goal is to develop open source software that works with MAIF files. I want to develop software for exporting and importing MAIF files from popular mail clients such as Outlook Express and Mozilla Mail. I also want to develop software to process the MAIF files: convert them to HTML, sort them, filter them, and so on. (I just searched for the project on SourceForge, and it doesn't come up under a search. I guess I have some work to do before it's really public.)
Getting a lock on broadband The Federal Communications Commission is quietly handing over control of the broadband Internet to a handful of massive corporations. [Salon]
It seems the world is full of unimaginative businessmen, journalists, government bureaucrats, and politicians who just don't "get it" about the Internet, and broadband Internet in particular. Who does "get it"? Net nerds do -- in particular, the nerds who designed in Internet.
Let's get one thing straight about broadband Internet: it's not video on demand.
This is an important point, because video on demand is a service offered primarily by Big Companies. So, when policy makers equate broadband Internet with video on demand, they concern themselves only with BigCo business.
This view is unimaginative, because it fails to realize that the Internet is the Great Equalizer. I mean that in this sense: The Internet ignorantly passes packets from originating computer to destination computer. I say "ignorantly" because the routers that transmit these packets across the Internet examine only the source and destination addresses -- only the information that is necessary to accomplish the delivery of the packet. The routers do not examine the contents of the packets, and they do not try to be clever. At least that's the way the Internet was originally designed. When the Internet is viewed in that way, it is understood to be completely content neutral. It's that property of being content neutral -- and therefore nondiscriminating -- that has made the Internet so successful in the past, and that must be preserved if we are to see innovation in the future. Thus, the Internet is the Great Equalizer because it doesn't care if the communicating devices are owned by BigCos or small companies.
The reason we need to get policy makers to "get it", is that they need to look to small companies for innovation and get past their focus on BigCos. BigCos don't innovate, they control.
Hey, I just thought of this. If the music and movie producers really want to stop piracy, why don't they try subliminal messages. :-) They could put this message into the background: "Illegal copying is wrong. You must buy legal copies. Illegal copying is wrong. You must buy legal copies...."
Facing the
Music
Rock stars and music-industry execs once
ruled the earth, but now -- in terms of size and profit margins -- the
music industry is becoming the book business (minus the literacy).
I just finished reading this fascinating article. Is the music industry doomed to become a low-margin, boring business? Maybe it will. Maybe rock and roll is just too worn out.
In my vision of the future of the music industry, the successful music companies make money by producing a huge volume of music and selling it cheaply to consumers. There's no need to spend millions promoting a promising artist. Just throw his music up on your web site so your subscribers can download it. Consumers do have an insatiable appetite for music, but they also get bored quickly. They are always looking for new music. Soon the music companies will catch on to that and give them what they want.
My own personal, short review of Mozilla 1.0: The mail client is unacceptable because it will always download the images in an HTML mail. In my opinion, that is an unacceptable violation of privacy, since many email marketing companies embed images in their messages to track whether or not users are viewing them. (If the image is downloaded, they assume the message was viewed.) The solution is to allow the user to disable downloading of images, or to allow the user to disable HTML mail altogether.
Having said that, though, I will also say that the Mozilla web browser rocks!
The mozilla.org web server seems to be carrying a heavy load today. I guess I'll wait a few days before I download Mozilla 1.0, which was officially released yesterday.
And congratulations to all the Mozilla developers!
For all the talk of copy protection, why don't consumers have copy protection over their personal information. How about this: a do-not-copy flag that consumers can set on their email address, phone number, etc. It kinda turns the tables, doesn't it? :-)
Best Buy changes privacy policy. The changes are only the latest in a disturbing trend of companies revamping their privacy policies to the detriment of consumers, privacy advocates say. [CNET News.com]
Best Buy Cashier: "May I have your cookie?"
Customer: "Sure. It's 9A94EE02B8C@bestbuy.com"
Digital Media Helps, Hurts Spending Forecast. Rising broadband penetration again expected to help spur growth in media spending, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. But lurking next to the numbers like a yin to the growth numbers' yang is the piracy issue. [internetnews.com: Top News]
Yeah, sure, broadband penetration will grow by <insert large number> percent over the next five years, etc. I don't believe it. In contrast to John Robb's belief that big companies will lack pricing power in the coming decade or so, the entertainment and media companies seem to think they have overwhelming pricing power. Broadband just doesn't work for entertainment. It's too expensive. $60 for a cable modem connection from Comcast. Then $25 for a RealOne subscription, $15 for an AOL subscription, $15 for a Giga news subscription, and so forth. All that to be able to sit at your computer desk and be entertained?
Now, let me bactrack a bit. The entertainment and media companies do have some pricing power owing to their monopoly positions.
Taiwan opens arms to open source. The government plans to launch an open-source project as early as next year that could save it as much as $295 million in royalty payments to Microsoft, says a report. [CNET News.com]
First, we hear about Germany. Now, we hear about Taiwan. I'm certain more governments are on the way. Why? It's pretty simple, really. There are three factors. First, basic office computing software is a very horizontal market. That means it's a very broad market and there is a large potential return from money invested by the government. Second, software has up-front development cost, but once the software is developed, the marginal distribution costs are near zero. That should put downward pressure on prices. And third, basic office software is now well understood, making the software development process relatively straightforward and the risk low.
I'm trying to digest this essay from John Robb: The New Economy II. The opinions of economists, of course, are all over the map. Still, I think this essay is a good read.
Are the music and film content owners a bunch of Chicken Littles, or what? One thing is for sure, they always see the glass as half empty. Spider-Man has been a huge success at the box office. That, to me, sounds like good reason to bring out the Champagne. Instead, we get more whining about Internet users who are sharing degraded copies of the movie. The software industry has learned years ago that there will always be a residual amount of piracy, and that a small amount of piracy can even be good, because it helps to grow your product's awareness among potential customers. The goal of the software industry has been to reduce piracy to an acceptable level, not try to eradicate it completely. I hope the music and film industry will learn this lesson soon.
Yes, I admit it. I downloaded and use software that I haven't paid for. Some of the software I haven't paid for includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla, AOL Instant Messenger, Emacs, PuTTY, NetBeans, Java Development Kit, FreeAmp, Eudora, Outlook Express, Real Player Basic, Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice, Windows Media Player, and many more. For some reason, the Business Software Alliance finds it very distrurbing that so many people download so much software without paying for it. Why?