Net Neutrality (finally) Back on the Front Burner
Alright… Don't try to tell me you don't care about Net Neutrality. Unless a friend printed this off for you, you’re reading this online and I’m guessing you don’t enjoy when a simple page like this takes a long time to load. Well, if some companies could have their way (*cough* Comcast *cough*), you’d be at their mercy when it comes to how fast your Internet is.
Hold on, let’s back up a little. What exactly did Comcast do and why are nerds like me dropping our keyboards for swords to fight the good fight against the evil corporations?
Last year the FCC determined that Comcast had been “throttling” Internet traffic for their customers. Basically they were filtering Internet data and if they found something that looked like it came from a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application, they slowed it down (or maybe stopped it entirely?) because it seemed suspicious. In case you don’t know, P2P applications have a famous (and mostly accurate) reputation for giving people a means to quickly download illegal copies of movies and music. The Comcast situation would be similar to police stopping all white Ford Broncos in the country and questioning them during the famous O.J. police chase in California.
Honestly, I have absolutely no problem with what Comcast did on a practical level. If you live in an apartment with a shared Internet connection and somebody is constantly downloading huge files (movies?), then that will slow down your connection significantly – it’s like constantly flushing a toilet while you’re trying to take a shower. I hope you kind of get the idea of what was going on. Comcast said “Alright file-sharers. We can’t scare you into stopping, so we’ll slow you down to the point where it’s not worth your time to download movies anymore”. The problem is that Comcast violated a very, very important aspect of the Internet: all traffic is to be treated equally. (Thou shalt not anger the noble nerds of the Internet)
If you browse to Google’s home page and then to Yahoo’s home page, the load times should be about the same (granted server location and all that garbage plays a role in the actual speed – let’s forget about that for now). That’s Net Neutrality. Google can’t go to Verizon or Comcast and say “Hey guys, we’ll pay you a ton of money if our pages can load faster than Microsoft’s pages – deal?”. Maybe something like that would start a huge bidding war between Google and Yahoo to see who can pay the most for the fastest pages – but that would completely destroy any chance for a new competitor to offer a similar service on the Web. Let’s say you’re some college kid and you’ve created a way to search the Internet that’s 10 times faster than Google or Yahoo. With Google and Microsoft throwing their chunks of money around there’s no way you can enter that battle.
Have no fear, the FCC is here!
The FCC has set up a Website that explains the new chairman’s (Julius Genachowski) thoughts about Net Neutrality and Internet availability in general. It’s a lot to read and you may not agree with all of it (or any of it), but it’s simply a must-read if you care at all about the future of the Internet.
http://www.openinternet.gov/read-speech.html
Let’s Get Creative?
Global warming isn’t really making headlines now, but it will be this December when 170 world leaders meet in Copenhagen for a massive climate conference. You’re not seeing things; 170 of 195 countries will be there. Essentially the entire world will be gathered in one place to talk about this. I think that’s pretty cool. One of the stated goals of this conference will be to draft a "Copenhagen Protocol" (I'm guessing a Kyoto Protocol on steroids and actually signed by the U.S.??).
Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean Secretary General of the United Nations (if you don't immediately recognize this name, shame on you), wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times today about his recent trip to the Arctic and how he agrees with most climatologists that the Arctic will probably be completely defrosted by 2030… That’s truly awful news for people like me who love cold weather, but of course there will be a ton of other negative consequences around the world if this is left unchecked (none of this should really surprise you).
Now, I won’t say I completely agree with every forecast I’ve heard about global warming, and I’m still not convinced it’s entirely our fault (I don’t think we know a whole lot about climate change yet and what affects it – we just like to think we do). I’d like to remind everyone that we were just as concerned about global cooling 40 years ago as we are about global warming today. However, I think it has been fairly clear that the Arctic has been getting warmer over the past couple of decades and the rate of warming seems to be going up. So are we totally doomed?
“There is nothing [we] can do. It's over, my friend. The game is lost."
That was a quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, in his interview for the Rolling Stone where he explained how he thought the war against global warming was lost years ago. I happen to agree with this – I really doubt there’s a lot we can do now to completely stop global warming. If you argue humans have little or no impact on climate change, then logically there’s little or nothing we can do to stop it. If you argue humans have a major impact, then two questions come to mind: 1) What exactly are we doing that is directly contributing to global warming? (I think we know some of the answers to this now), and 2) How can we stop doing these things while continuing to thrive as a species?
I’m not going to pretend like I have any answers or even good ideas for dealing with climate change, but I think those types of questions are good to at least keep in mind.
I really don’t think we’re doomed, but I do think we’ll need to be extremely adaptive going forward. That’s good news for us. It seems like humans have taken over the world in part because we’re insanely adaptive. I don’t know about you, but I’m still shocked by how we’ve learned to live in some of the craziest climates on Earth. So perhaps our battle cry should change from “Stop Global Warming” to “Let’s Get Creative”. How can we live in our post-apocalyptic, melted-Arctic, global desert of eternal misery with 24/7 mega-hurricanes world of tomorrow?
When the sun is up, I always eat it…
This morning I was listening to a progressive trance house dance Internet radio station on iTunes called Pure.FM and I was excited to discover that you can download some of the music they play from their forum. Now I have more random music to listen to at work while trying to program! In other news, I saw a BBC article this morning saying the new first lady of Japan (Miyuki Hatoyama) is a little, uh, strange. Can we say "self-professed space traveler who has visited Venus with some alien friends"? Yep. My favorite part of the article is the quote highlight from Mrs. Hatoyama: "When the sun is up, I always eat it." Fantastic. Nothing like some sun with a bit of coffee to start your day right.
Bonjour les Monde
I figure everyone has a blog now, why not me? I'm not sure what I'll write about, but I would like to practice writing more and I've read on the Interweb that this is a good way to practice.
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