https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/create-national-holidays-voting-consolidating-other-holidays-honor-civic-engagement/wx7xMFCR
Please consider whether this suggestion makes sense.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Who worries about the Internet "pipes" getting clogged?
I started looking at the pool.ntp.org project. I manage several data centers with various kinds of connections and some of the machines disagree with each other about the time. The effort behind pool.ntp.org seems to be a really good idea. It made me wonder, why is information about the Internet not shared in the same way?
Remember hearing about Internet blockages in Syria? A private company in the US reported it. Who is that? Who are their customers? Why are we hearing about the state of the Internet from a private company? There could be a distributed group of people sharing information to do the same thing. Sounds sort of like something you would do on the Internet, yes?
I worry about what drives connectivity, because often it seems to not do so. We wanted to serve customers in Jakarta. The Jakarta-based provider have really bad service to Jakarta. It turns out that if you go to Tokyo, the connection to Jakarta is wicked fast. Well, all the infrastructure in Indonesia points out. There is less infrastructure for services within Indonesia.
And then I hear that if you look at connections between the US and Europe on the Internet, the distributed-to-survive-a-nuclear-war-or-massive-disaster-Internet, a massive proportion of them go through Manhattan, an island. Because who would ever attack Manhattan? Really.
What's my point? I am not sure. But if you want a robust Internet, is letting the companies run it put all of the eggs in a very small number of baskets a good idea? Maybe not. Maybe I should find out about the state of connectivity around the things I care about. I bet I know where I can but a $10,000 whitepaper that tells me what I want to know.
Remember hearing about Internet blockages in Syria? A private company in the US reported it. Who is that? Who are their customers? Why are we hearing about the state of the Internet from a private company? There could be a distributed group of people sharing information to do the same thing. Sounds sort of like something you would do on the Internet, yes?
I worry about what drives connectivity, because often it seems to not do so. We wanted to serve customers in Jakarta. The Jakarta-based provider have really bad service to Jakarta. It turns out that if you go to Tokyo, the connection to Jakarta is wicked fast. Well, all the infrastructure in Indonesia points out. There is less infrastructure for services within Indonesia.
And then I hear that if you look at connections between the US and Europe on the Internet, the distributed-to-survive-a-nuclear-war-or-massive-disaster-Internet, a massive proportion of them go through Manhattan, an island. Because who would ever attack Manhattan? Really.
What's my point? I am not sure. But if you want a robust Internet, is letting the companies run it put all of the eggs in a very small number of baskets a good idea? Maybe not. Maybe I should find out about the state of connectivity around the things I care about. I bet I know where I can but a $10,000 whitepaper that tells me what I want to know.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Facebook IPO chatter reminds me why Firefox is so important to me...
Hearing all the media blather about the upcoming Facebook IPO has made me think about a couple of things. Mostly, I am so glad I have Firefox available. I learned to develop Facebook applications a few years back, looked at what the applications could see about a user, and removed myself from every single application on Facebook. The amount of information an application user is giving away is amazing.
Luckily, I have Firefox and add-ons like Adblock and Ghostery (for tracking/blocking inter-site data slurping) and other tools of that sort to help me to, perhaps, stay under the radar of some of those people. Somewhat.
On the other hand, Mozilla seems to be reluctant to let the search bar be configured to go to https://www.google.com. (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633773) Hm. Maybe Mozilla is still, in some ways at least, just another company. O well, it is something to think about.
Luckily, I have Firefox and add-ons like Adblock and Ghostery (for tracking/blocking inter-site data slurping) and other tools of that sort to help me to, perhaps, stay under the radar of some of those people. Somewhat.
On the other hand, Mozilla seems to be reluctant to let the search bar be configured to go to https://www.google.com. (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633773) Hm. Maybe Mozilla is still, in some ways at least, just another company. O well, it is something to think about.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Internet: how are those tubes working anyway?
I am finding myself dealing with an unexpected question. Does the Internet work? You know, the whole moving data from place to place. Is it really working?
Well, of course it is. But perhaps not for everyone. I am trying to find out why we often have problems reaching our data centers. The company I work for sells software for people learning English. I think this is the root of the problem. There might be 2 billion people on the planet with an interest in learning English, but not too many of them live near a T1. Why can't I reach my data centers? Maybe because they are in places like Ulan Bator and Ho Chi Minh City.
Why do we need all these data centers? Often it is because we have to have an in-country data center to avoid having all of our customers take a "Golden Shield" hit. If customers in China, or Vietnam or Saudi Arabia, or other places, need to get content from outside the country, the latency turns out to be very high. Get the content into an in-country data center and your performance problems go away.
But here is an odd thing. We have customers in Jakarta that have connect problems. Getting an ISP in Jakarta does not fix it. Turns out that a connection from one part of Jakarta to another part of Jakarta is slow and unreliable. Serving data from Tokyo to Jakarta, however, is fast and reliable. Hm.
Actually I am interested if anyone has ideas about how to measure connectivity more broadly. One might think the net would have distributed sources of information about connectivity, but it does not seem to be so. One can measure pings, but one needs to keep track of a lot of pings to figure anything out. One can run traceroutes. Or not. Somebody in Mongolia blocks traceroutes, for example. And traceroutes do not necessarily follow the same routes that regular traffic will. Or you can buy reports about connectivity, if you have spend tens of thousands on them or sign up for fairly expensive services. And Akamai and other services work great, assuming you want to sell something to the creme de la creme of the First World. And that is, after all, most of the businesses out there.
I wonder if there is a way to collect connectivity information in a distributed, peer-to-peer manner. Perhaps we can use this Internet thing for that, too. Or is something available and I just have not hit upon it? Does anyone run "weather reports" for the Internet? Could it be accessed as a utility? Looking for suggestions, questions, thoughts, ridicule, insults, jibes, or whatever works for you.
Well, of course it is. But perhaps not for everyone. I am trying to find out why we often have problems reaching our data centers. The company I work for sells software for people learning English. I think this is the root of the problem. There might be 2 billion people on the planet with an interest in learning English, but not too many of them live near a T1. Why can't I reach my data centers? Maybe because they are in places like Ulan Bator and Ho Chi Minh City.
Why do we need all these data centers? Often it is because we have to have an in-country data center to avoid having all of our customers take a "Golden Shield" hit. If customers in China, or Vietnam or Saudi Arabia, or other places, need to get content from outside the country, the latency turns out to be very high. Get the content into an in-country data center and your performance problems go away.
But here is an odd thing. We have customers in Jakarta that have connect problems. Getting an ISP in Jakarta does not fix it. Turns out that a connection from one part of Jakarta to another part of Jakarta is slow and unreliable. Serving data from Tokyo to Jakarta, however, is fast and reliable. Hm.
Actually I am interested if anyone has ideas about how to measure connectivity more broadly. One might think the net would have distributed sources of information about connectivity, but it does not seem to be so. One can measure pings, but one needs to keep track of a lot of pings to figure anything out. One can run traceroutes. Or not. Somebody in Mongolia blocks traceroutes, for example. And traceroutes do not necessarily follow the same routes that regular traffic will. Or you can buy reports about connectivity, if you have spend tens of thousands on them or sign up for fairly expensive services. And Akamai and other services work great, assuming you want to sell something to the creme de la creme of the First World. And that is, after all, most of the businesses out there.
I wonder if there is a way to collect connectivity information in a distributed, peer-to-peer manner. Perhaps we can use this Internet thing for that, too. Or is something available and I just have not hit upon it? Does anyone run "weather reports" for the Internet? Could it be accessed as a utility? Looking for suggestions, questions, thoughts, ridicule, insults, jibes, or whatever works for you.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Why iCloud?
I am increasingly glad that I left Apple to do other things. And I am sure Apple will continue to make more money for a while. But one has to wonder.
Here is a company dedicated to the "Wow!". The stars in their developer teams create these applications that you launch and, really, they are beautiful. They are only 85% finished, but they look good and one does not see the problems until a few days later. Then, hey, you already bought it. They have a Support group to make you feel better about this. And you can file bugs. And wait for the next version. But that's about it.
There was only one place in Apple that spoke about things like MTBF and that actually measured things like reliability. That was the server group. You know, the one whose products got deprecated and that is probably mostly gone at this point. Apple's apps are known for the elegance of their UIs and not for reliability. Everyone else at Apple says "You re-boot and your problem is gone? Problem solved." And these are the people that are going to build a cloud-based music service?
The important people at Apple used to design things, create standards, carve beauty out of technological crap. Now, the important people are going to be running a data center full of HP machines. In North Carolina. It is truly sad.
Of course, iCloud is a good idea for Apple. You used to pay for your music, own your music, and hold your music. With the iTunes Store, you pay for your music and hold your music and Apple owns your music. Now, with iCloud, you pay for your music, Apple holds your music and Apple owns your music. And this is a good deal. Why is Apple doing this? They might say, "because iCould."
Here is a company dedicated to the "Wow!". The stars in their developer teams create these applications that you launch and, really, they are beautiful. They are only 85% finished, but they look good and one does not see the problems until a few days later. Then, hey, you already bought it. They have a Support group to make you feel better about this. And you can file bugs. And wait for the next version. But that's about it.
There was only one place in Apple that spoke about things like MTBF and that actually measured things like reliability. That was the server group. You know, the one whose products got deprecated and that is probably mostly gone at this point. Apple's apps are known for the elegance of their UIs and not for reliability. Everyone else at Apple says "You re-boot and your problem is gone? Problem solved." And these are the people that are going to build a cloud-based music service?
The important people at Apple used to design things, create standards, carve beauty out of technological crap. Now, the important people are going to be running a data center full of HP machines. In North Carolina. It is truly sad.
Of course, iCloud is a good idea for Apple. You used to pay for your music, own your music, and hold your music. With the iTunes Store, you pay for your music and hold your music and Apple owns your music. Now, with iCloud, you pay for your music, Apple holds your music and Apple owns your music. And this is a good deal. Why is Apple doing this? They might say, "because iCould."
Monday, January 18, 2010
China Stealing IP? I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You....
We're hearing a lot of news about China trying to steal intellectual property from companies like Google. There's a lot of sanctimonious news coverage about how we have innovative companies and China is trying to steal their way out of having to do the work.
Then one of these "innovative" companies was named. Microsoft. Then it occurred to me where the objection really comes from. Microsoft has never done an innovative thing, ever, except invent OLE. And you can thank that for your virus problems. But they do buy lots and lots of other companies that have innovated. So, in the US, the currency of our society is just that, currency. The dollar rules all. In China, political power is the currency. So, Microsoft spends one type of currency to get access to other people's creativity because they are out of ideas. And China spends another type of currency to get access to other people's creativity because they are out of ideas. They are different, but there are similarities.
We lose a lot of IP because we manufacture in China. We manufacture there because they have weak worker protection laws, no environmental regulations and, basically, business can do what it wants. There is a basic lack of civic law. Want to make cheap plastic crap and dump the waste in the river? Rock and roll! But then our stuff gets stolen. CDs get pirated, designs get copied. Why? Perhaps it is because there is a basic lack of civic law. But isn't that why we want to manufacture there in the first place? And then, do we get to complain about it as well?
People who are really being creative know their work cannot be outsourced. Companies trying to milk a fifty-year old file of patents have reason to be upset. It just does not bother me.
Then one of these "innovative" companies was named. Microsoft. Then it occurred to me where the objection really comes from. Microsoft has never done an innovative thing, ever, except invent OLE. And you can thank that for your virus problems. But they do buy lots and lots of other companies that have innovated. So, in the US, the currency of our society is just that, currency. The dollar rules all. In China, political power is the currency. So, Microsoft spends one type of currency to get access to other people's creativity because they are out of ideas. And China spends another type of currency to get access to other people's creativity because they are out of ideas. They are different, but there are similarities.
We lose a lot of IP because we manufacture in China. We manufacture there because they have weak worker protection laws, no environmental regulations and, basically, business can do what it wants. There is a basic lack of civic law. Want to make cheap plastic crap and dump the waste in the river? Rock and roll! But then our stuff gets stolen. CDs get pirated, designs get copied. Why? Perhaps it is because there is a basic lack of civic law. But isn't that why we want to manufacture there in the first place? And then, do we get to complain about it as well?
People who are really being creative know their work cannot be outsourced. Companies trying to milk a fifty-year old file of patents have reason to be upset. It just does not bother me.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Three Pictures
What do these three pictures have in common?
The first is a US Dept of Homeland Security warning. The second is a Proposition 65 warning from California. The third is from Firefox when we add _any_ add-on.
Obvious questions are:
- does anyone feel safer when they see these?
- do these actually inform one of anything?
- why are these being displayed? for whose benefit?
 |  |  |
The first is a US Dept of Homeland Security warning. The second is a Proposition 65 warning from California. The third is from Firefox when we add _any_ add-on.
Obvious questions are:
- does anyone feel safer when they see these?
- do these actually inform one of anything?
- why are these being displayed? for whose benefit?
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