I’ve become an admin at the Stellarparthenon BBS, and there are some problems, so I am hip deep in figuring out what exactly is wrong.
Later dudes.
Category: Internet
Tweet of the Day
I don’t know why I wasn’t invited, I’m great at weddings… @KimKardashian @kanyewest
— George RR Martin (@GeorgeRRMartin_) May 25, 2014
I think that I pulled something laughing.
H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
I Think that the FCC Just Kicked the Can Down the Road
After FCC Chairman, and former telco lobbyist, unleashed a bit of a sh%$ storm when he basically proposed ending net neutrality and relying on the kindness of the FCC in the future.
So the FCC punted today:
Federal regulators appear to share one view about so-called net neutrality: It is a good thing.
But defining net neutrality? That is where things get messy.
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to open for public debate new rules meant to guarantee an open Internet. Before the plan becomes final, though, the chairman of the commission, Tom Wheeler, will need to convince his colleagues and an array of powerful lobbying groups that the plan follows the principle of net neutrality, the idea that all content running through the Internet’s pipes is treated equally.
While the rules are meant to prevent Internet providers from knowingly slowing data, they would allow content providers to pay for a guaranteed fast lane of service. Some opponents of the plan, those considered net neutrality purists, argue that allowing some content to be sent along a fast lane would essentially discriminate against other content.
………
The proposal also requests public comments on whether and by how much the commission should tighten regulation of Internet service providers. For example, the commission asks whether it should reclassify high-speed Internet service as a utilitylike application, subject to stricter regulatory controls than now apply, and if it should ban certain practices that might impede consumers from getting equal access to all legal online content through their chosen Internet service provider.
So basically, they proposed a tiered internet with protections that depend on whether or not you get a Bush appointed judge, in which case, you are f%$#ed, and also proposed returning ISPs to the status of telecommunications services, (Title II) which would regulate them as utilities.
I think that the intention here is to hope that the controversy will die down over the next few months months, and then they can go with the telcos and cable companies with less public push-back.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation takes a rather similar view of these developments:
There’s good news: the nationwide outcry against the Federal Communications Commission’s troublesome proposal for new Open Internet rules is clearly having an impact. At a public meeting this morning, commissioners were factoring in questions that—according to previous accounts—weren’t on the table only days ago. The bad news: the FCC still is considering a set of rules that will allow Internet providers to discriminate how we access websites with only vague and uncertain limits, endangering network neutrality and threatening the vibrant growth of the Internet.
We’re still waiting for the full proposal. But according to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s statements at the open meeting, the FCC didn’t take pay-to-play “fast lanes” off the table. Paid “fast lane” access fees threaten the engine of innovation that has allowed hackers, startup companies, and kids in their college dorm rooms to make the Internet that we know and love today. We want the Internet to continue to thrive as a platform for innovation and expression; vague rules that bless “pay to play,” with ill-defined limits, are not compatible with our vision of an open Internet.
The good folks at the EFF also provide a tool, Dear FCC, to help people make their feelings known during the public comment period.
It turns out that there is one unambiguously good thing in the proposal, the FCC has proposed assigning 3 television channels to unlicensed public use:
While FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s fast-lane/slow-lane net neutrality proposal was taking a beating on all sides (even Wheeler took a few whacks at it), Internet companies sneaked through a huge victory when the agency agreed to set aside up to three channels of TV airwaves for unlicensed use.
That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s something that Google, Microsoft and other tech companies have spent years advocating. In the past, Republican lawmakers have mostly shut down those efforts, saying that billion-dollar tech companies don’t need a freebie.
This time it mostly slid under the radar as Republicans were distracted by net neutrality and upset about proposed bidding restrictions on AT&T and Verizon in the upcoming TV airwaves auction.
Most airwaves can only be used by companies or parties that hold exclusive licenses; unlicensed airwaves can be used by anyone. Wi-Fi networks run on unlicensed airwaves, and tech companies have been trying for years to get more set aside for more powerful Wi-Fi networks.
Internet companies recently got a huge chunk of airwaves set aside for unlicensed use. But they also coveted a channel or two of TV airwaves, which are among the most valuable since signals on those frequencies can go through buildings and travel relatively long distances.
With its move Thursday, the FCC basically created a half-mile public beach in the middle of multimillion-dollar mansions. ………
This is akin to the various white space proposals that have been fought tooth and nail by the wireless firms.
If this survives, it will be an unalloyed good, but unless the pressure is kept up on the FCC about reinstating Title II, we are going to continue to have a overpriced and under-performing broadband services in the United States.
Seriously? Chattanooga has the Best Internet in the Nation?
Actually, yes.
You see, Chattanooga has a municiplally owned fiber optic network:
For thousands of years, Native Americans used the river banks here to cross a gap in the Appalachian Mountains, and trains sped through during the Civil War to connect the eastern and western parts of the Confederacy. In the 21st century, it is the Internet that passes through Chattanooga, and at lightning speed.
“Gig City,” as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest — and now one of the least expensive — high-speed Internet services in the United States. For less than $70 a month, consumers enjoy an ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic connection that transfers data at one gigabit per second. That is 50 times the average speed for homes in the rest of the country, and just as rapid as service in Hong Kong, which has the fastest Internet in the world.
………
Since the fiber-optic network switched on four years ago, the signs of growth in Chattanooga are unmistakable. ………
………
EPB, the city-owned utility formerly named Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, said that only about 3,640 residences, or 7.5 percent of its Internet-service subscribers, are signed up for the Gigabit service offered over the fiber-optic network. Roughly 55 businesses also subscribe. The rest of EPB’s customers subscribe to a (relatively) slower service offered on the network of 100 megabits per second, which is still faster than many other places in the country.
Gee. The private sector, largely unregulated, cable and phone companies deliver what is among the slowest and most expensive internet service in the developed world, and publicly owned providers outperform them.
Maybe it’s because the for-profit companies see preserving, and leveraging, their near monopoly status as more ……… well ……… profitable than improving the quality and price service.
Hoocoodanode?
It Sucks to be Tom Wheeler
It turns out that the Telco Lobbyist turned FCC Chairman is experiencing a lot of push-back regarding his proposal to gut net neutrality, not individuals, but also from internet giants like Google and other Democratic FCC commissioners:
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to let ISPs charge Web services for an Internet fast lane drew condemnation from many net neutrality advocates, and now two members of the commission have expressed doubts about the plan as well.
Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn, the two Democratic members of the commission other than Wheeler, spoke about the chairman’s proposal yesterday. In a speech at a gathering of state library agencies, Rosenworcel called for delaying a vote on the proposal:Network neutrality is the principle that consumers can go where they want and do what they want on the Internet, without interference from their broadband provider. The American Library Association and the library community have long been champions of network neutrality and an open Internet. Libraries, of course, know that an open Internet is important for free speech, access to information, and economic growth. I also support an open Internet. So I have real concerns about FCC Chairman Wheeler’s proposal on network neutrality—which is before the agency right now.
To his credit, he has acknowledged that all options are on the table. This includes discussion about what a “commercially reasonable” Internet fast lane looks like. While I do not know now where this conversation will head on a substantive basis, I can tell you right now I have real concerns about process.
His proposal has unleashed a torrent of public response. Tens of thousands of e-mails, hundreds of calls, commentary all across the Internet. We need to respect that input and we need time for that input. So while I recognize the urgency to move ahead and develop rules with dispatch, I think the greater urgency comes in giving the American public opportunity to speak right now, before we head down this road.
For this reason, I think we should delay our consideration of his rules by a least a month. I believe that rushing headlong into a rulemaking next week fails to respect the public response to his proposal.The FCC is scheduled to vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on May 15. This would open a new public comment process, but Rosenworcel explained that it would also end the so-called “Sunshine Period,” another good opportunity for debate.
………
Also yesterday, dozens of tech companies including Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Yahoo sent a letter to the FCC (PDF) asking the commission to halt any plan allowing payments from Web services to ISPs in exchange for speeding up traffic.
“Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination, the Commission’s rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent,” the letter said. “The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.”
It’s still on the agenda for May 15, but I think that it likely that it will be delayed.
There is a groundswell of opposition to this, and if they delay this, I don’t think that it will go forward, much in the way that the SOPA/PIPA protests first delayed, then shut down those bills. (For that year anyway)
I do think that this will come back though.
I will say that Wheeler may be the point man, but the only way that this happened is with approval from the White House.
The Cossacks work for the Czar.
Here is Something to Fill You With Dread………
The Obama administration is proposing adding “papers, please” to the web:
A few years back, the White House had a brilliant idea: Why not create a single, secure online ID that Americans could use to verify their identity across multiple websites, starting with local government services. The New York Times described it at the time as a “driver’s license for the internet.”
Sound convenient? It is. Sound scary? It is.
Next month, a pilot program of the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” will begin in government agencies in two US states, to test out whether the pros of a federally verified cyber ID outweigh the cons.
………
To start, there’s the privacy issue. Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation immediately pointed out the red flags, arguing that the right to anonymous speech in the digital realm is protected under the First Amendment. It called the program “radical,” “concerning,” and pointed out that the plan “makes scant mention of the unprecedented threat such a scheme would pose to privacy and free speech online.”
And the keepers of the identity credentials wouldn’t be the government itself, but a third party organization. When the program was introduced in 2011, banks, technology companies or cellphone service providers were suggested for the role, so theoretically Google or Verizon could have access to a comprehensive profile of who you are that’s shared with every site you visit, as mandated by the government.
Post-NSA revelations, we have a good sense for the dystopian Big Brother society the EFF is worried about. As the organization told the Times, at the least “we would need new privacy laws or regulations to prohibit identity verifiers from selling user data or sharing it with law enforcement officials without a warrant.”
First, we need to be clear that the NSA would use this to track users whether or not they can get the rubber stamp FISA court to approve.
We know that they will, because that is what they do.
Second, to paraphrase Edward Elmer “Doc” Smith, PhD, any technology that the government can create will be duplicated by criminals, or the Chinese, or the Russians, or the Koch brothers.
The depressing thing is that I don’t think that Republicans have enough outrage left after, Bengazi! Bengazi! Bengazi!, and the Democratic establishment won’t challenge the US state security apparatus, at east not while one of their own is running it.
I hope that this goes the way of the Clipper chip, but I would not bet on this.
Mazel Tov!
Google has fired the head of its Google+ effort, and will be redirecting its resources:
When Vic Gundotra, the head of Google+, suddenly announced his departure from Google today, many were left wondering “why” and what it meant for the future of Google+. He didn’t give a reason for leaving, but according to a report from TechCrunch, the likely reason is a major shakeup for Google’s social network.
In short, Google seems to be backing away from the original Google+ strategy. The report states that Google+ will no longer be considered a product that competes with Facebook and Twitter, and that Google’s mission to force Google+ into every product will end. With this downgrade in importance comes a downgrade in resources. TechCrunch claims that 1000-1200 employees—many of which formed the core of Google+—will be moved to other divisions. Google Hangouts will supposedly be moved to Android, and the Google+ photos team is “likely” to follow. “Basically, talent will be shifting away from the Google+ kingdom and towards Android as a platform,” the report said. The strange part is that both of these teams create cross-platform products. So if the report is true, there will be a group inside the Android team making iOS and Web apps, which doesn’t seem like the best fit.
A Google spokesperson gave Ars the same statement the company gave TechCrunch: “Today’s news has no impact on our Google+ strategy—we have an incredibly talented team that will continue to build great user experiences across Google+, Hangouts, and Photos.” On Gundotra’s announcement post, Larry Page wrote “we’ll continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever-increasing number of Google+ fans.”
Despite Google’s denial, it makes sense for the company to back away from Google+. The social network hasn’t gained the massive userbase it would need to rival Facebook, and the aggressive integration strategy has been universally hated by users. As Google gets bigger and bigger, it faces harsher scrutiny, and few things the company has done have been more disliked than Google+. According to the report, Google+’s YouTube takeover was seen as “a rocky move” even inside the company.
The G+ strategy was driven by abject terror of Facebook, and the change in direction implies that Google is no longer driven by this.
My guess is that Google sees something in the reams of data that they accumulate showing that Facebook’s “threat” is of less concern.
In any case, I’m just glad that they won’t continue to break their other apps in order to foist Google+ on the rest of us.
Thanks, Obama
You know, this is to be expected. Obama appoints an industry lobbyist to head the FCC, and the FCC ends network neutrality: (See also here)
………
The following can be attributed to Michael Weinberg, Vice President at Public Knowledge:
“The FCC is inviting ISPs to pick winners and losers online. The very essence of a “commercial reasonableness” standard is discrimination. And the core of net neutrality is non discrimination. This is not net neutrality. This standard allows ISPs to impose a new price of entry for innovation on the Internet. When the Commission used a commercial reasonableness standard for wireless data roaming, it explicitly found that it may be commercially reasonable for a broadband ISP to charge an edge provider higher rates because its service is competitively threatening.
“It is hard to see how the commercial reasonableness standard, which inherently offers less protection than the standard in the previous Open Internet Rules, can serve the same policy goals. Additionally, approaching discrimination on a case-by-case basis creates less certainty than clear rules and disadvantages small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Commission should instead seek to find a way to ensure true net neutrality, including protections against discrimination by ISPs for commercial purposes. The DC Circuit Court opinion made it clear that the only way to achieve net neutrality is to reclassify internet access as a telecommunications service.”
What a thought: Obama’s FCC chair does not have the guts to reverse the that it made under the Bush administration to classify if ISP’s service as information services, as opposed to telecommunications services, which meant that they were not common carriers.
It also refused to appeal the DC Court of Appeals decision to the Supreme Court.
And they did this because ……… Regulatory capture, I guess.
It certainly fits in with Obama cozying up to malefactors in dysfunctional markets as opposed to trying to fix those markets. (Obama care, Banksters walking free, The Droning of Brown People, the NSA, etc.)
Oh well, when the Kochs take over the internet, maybe they will give Obama a medal.
Naah ……… I’m just sh%$#ing you ……… They’ll find a trumped up charge to throw him in jail.
H/t Kevin Drum for the pic.
Why the NSA Cannot be Trusted with Our Cybersecurity
Many of you may have heard of the “Heartbleed” bug, which may allow people to access passwords of users and the crypto keys of for websites using the most popular SSL program, OpenSSL.
It now appears that the NSA knew about Heartbleedfor 2 years, and kept it a secret so that they could use the exploit:
The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.
The agency’s reported decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the government’s top computer experts. The NSA, after declining to comment on the report, subsequently denied that it was aware of Heartbleed until the vulnerability was made public by a private security report earlier this month.
“Reports that NSA or any other part of the government were aware of the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability before 2014 are wrong,” according to an e-mailed statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Heartbleed appears to be one of the biggest flaws in the Internet’s history, affecting the basic security of as many as two-thirds of the world’s websites. Its discovery and the creation of a fix by researchers five days ago prompted consumers to change their passwords, the Canadian government to suspend electronic tax filing and computer companies including Cisco Systems Inc. to Juniper Networks Inc. to provide patches for their systems.
Putting the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA was able to obtain passwords and other basic data that are the building blocks of the sophisticated hacking operations at the core of its mission, but at a cost. Millions of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nations’ intelligence arms and criminal hackers.
This bug is, to Bowlderize Joe Biden, “A big f%$#ing deal.”
It basically completely breaks internet security, and the NSA sat on it, because they wanted to use the exploit.
The idea that anyone would allow the NSA in on any discussion of computer security is truly troubling. It is like like allowing a young Willie Sutton to consult on bank security.*
* Later in life, after he got out of prison, Willie Sutton did actually consult on bank security.
Mozilla Cuts Its Losses
Brendan Eich is out as Mozilla Corporation CEO:
Less than two weeks after drawing controversy over his appointment as CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, Brendan Eich has resigned from the position.
In a post at Mozilla’s official blog, executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker confirmed the news with an unequivocal apology on the company’s behalf. “Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it,” Baker wrote. “We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”
The action comes days after dating site OKCupid became the most vocal opponent of Eich’s hiring. Mozilla offered repeated statements about LGBT inclusivity within the company over the past two weeks, but those never came with a specific response from Eich about his thousands of dollars of donations in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that sought to ban gay marriage in the state.
Eich’s bigotry has been an issue before, and for some reason known only to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they decided to make him the face of the organization.
It was further compounded when Eich refused to offer anything vaguely resembling a sincere apology, and instead offered platitudes about how tolerant people needed to validate his bigotry.
Don’t let this door hit your ass on the way out.
When Someone Defines Tolerance as Accepting His Own Bigotry, He is a Hypocrite and a Fool
Case in point, the self-immolation of Mozilla because they chose to hire an homophobic bigot as CEO:
Mozilla named a new chief executive this week to lead the non-profit Web organization as it tries to keep its Firefox browser relevant in the mobile age. The appointment has proved controversial in more ways than one.
Three Mozilla board members resigned over the choice of Brendan Eich, a Mozilla co-founder, as the new CEO. Gary Kovacs, a former Mozilla CEO who runs online security company AVG Technologies; John Lilly, another former Mozilla CEO now a partner at venture-capital firm Greylock Partners; and Ellen Siminoff, CEO of online education startup Shmoop, left the board last week.
The departures leave three people on the Mozilla board: co-founder Mitchell Baker; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, and Katharina Borchert, chief executive of German news site Spiegel Online.
The three board members who resigned sought a CEO from outside Mozilla with experience in the mobile industry who could help expand the organization’s Firefox OS mobile-operating system and balance the skills of co-founders Eich and Baker, the people familiar with the situation said. They did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Mozilla spokesman Mike Manning confirmed the three remaining board members, but he declined to comment further on Friday. He did not immediately respond to a request to speak to Eich and Baker.
………
The board departures are not the only source of early pressure on the new Mozilla CEO. Some employees of the organization are calling for Eich to step down because he donated $1,000 to the campaign in support of Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state.
“I do not support the Board’s appointment of @BrendanEich as CEO,” Kat Braybrooke, a curation and co-design lead at the organization, wrote on Twitter on Thursday:
The problem is that Brendan Eich have $1000 to the H8 amendment, aka Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative in California, and when this was revealed, his response was to suggest that people should be more tolerant about this.
That is complete bullsh%$.
While I agree with 1st amendment argument protecting his right to engage in this sort of speech, it is wrong to suggest that his opponents should accept him to, “make Mozilla a place of equality and welcome for all.”
Social, opprobrium is precisely the sort of response that comes from an open marketplace of ideas.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Toast
There has been a lot going in Turkey.
There is a recording that allegedly has the Turkey’s PM taking about a corruption coverup with his son.
About a week ago, when this went viral, Turkey blocked Twitter, and today, they blocked YouTube.
There is a point in every scandal when its target goes a little bit nuts, and Erdogan has hit this point.
This stage is characteristic of the end-game.
I don’t know whether it will be his party, or the opposition, or the Turkish military who will take him down, but down he will be taken.
Comcast Doesn’t Give a F%$#
I cannot add anything to this:
Why the NSA is a Bigger Danger to Our Way of Life than is Al-Qaeda
We already have a part of our state security apparatus with a history of blackmail for their own benefit, specifically Hoover’s FBI, and now we discover that the NSA has collaborated with their British counterparts to intercept webcam pictures from millions of people:
Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy”.
If you don’t think this sort of stuff cannot be used against you, what happens if they decide that they to shut you up, and your little is stupid enough to sext their boy friend.
Something like 10% of the millions of documents are images of body parts that could get an FCC sanction.
And you wonder why former counter-terrorism Czar Richard Clarke is worrying that NSA actions might presage the establishment of a police state:
Revelations about NSA monitoring activities over the last year show the potential for a police state mechanism, according to the former U.S. cybersecurity czar, but there is still time to avoid the dire consequences.
At the 2014 Cloud Security Alliance Summit, unofficial RSA Conference opener Richard Clarke, chairman of Washington, D.C.-based Good Harbor Consulting LLC, spoke to a packed audience. The former cybersecurity advisor to President Barack Obama discussed his involvement in the December 2013 report reviewing the data collection and monitoring capabilities at the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Clarke said that the reaction to leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has perhaps been overblown, because he described the employees at the three-letter agencies as “incredibly intelligent people” who are focused on combating terrorism and punishing violations of human rights. As part of the review process, Clarke and his group were given what he called carte blanche security clearances to review all of the agencies’ intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Those employees are not currently listening to random phone calls and reading email, Clarke said, but that doesn’t mean U.S. citizens should ignore the agencies’ growing capabilities.
“In terms of collecting intelligence, they are very good. Far better than you could imagine,” Clarke said. “But they have created, with the growth of technologies, the potential for a police state.”
Clarke said such concerns are hardly new, pointing to the government committee headed by Sen. Frank Church in the 1970s. Church warned at the time that the technologies at intelligence agencies were developing at such an alarming rate that, if they were all turned on, the U.S. would never be able to turn them off, effectively creating a permanent police state in which the entire popular would be under constant surveillance.
Though such warnings seem dire, Clarke noted that the seemingly endless scope of current government surveillance activities stemmed largely from a lack of strict guidance from policy makers. He said a major aspect of the report to the White House was simply prompting the questions that were previously unasked: What are our intelligence agencies collecting? What should they be collecting? If we should be collecting data, how do we safeguard it? If we’re collecting data, how do we stay consistent with U.S. traditions of privacy and government oversight?
This is also why security expert Bruce Schneier is suggesting that the National Security Agency be broken up:
The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission — protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies — has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era.
Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA’s power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that’s increasingly putting us all at risk. It’s time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.
Broadly speaking, three types of NSA surveillance programs were exposed by the documents released by Edward Snowden. And while the media tends to lump them together, understanding their differences is critical to understanding how to divide up the NSA’s missions.
The organization is out of control, and its actions do not properly serve our security needs, and it increasingly sees its mission as simply expanding its reach and power.
Best Comment Ever on the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger, With Taiwanese News Video
Telco Maven, and fellow medieval recreation afficianado, Harold Feld, gives us the best comment ever on the merger:
OH MY GOD!! YOU COMCAST PEOPLE HAVE NO LIMITS! YOU’RE LIKE SOME GIANT, COAX-TENTACLED CTHULHU-BEAST THAT KEEPS PROMISING TO DEVOUR US ALL BETWEEN 8 A.M. AND NOON BUT DOESN’T ACTUALLY GET AROUND TO DEVOURING US UNTIL AFTER 3 P.M. BECAUSE YOU GOT ‘STUCK IN TRAFFIC’ AND A PREVIOUS DEVOURING RAN LONGER THAN EXPECTED . . . .
Not only that, he raises one of the famous (infamous?) Taiwanese CGI news animations.
Mr. Feld, you are a f%$#ing genius.
Why Do I See the NSA Behind This Sh%$?
The Internet Engineering Task Force has proposed a way to speed up encrypted connections that works by removing the encryption for part of the journey. Rather unsurprisingly it looks like a way allow the NSA, FBI, etc. to crawl up your ass into your encrypted data:
A draft put forward at the Internet Engineering Task Force has drawn the ire of prominent privacy activist Lauren Weinstein as “one of the most alarming Internet proposals” he’s ever seen.
The document that’s upset Weinstein is this one, out of the HTTPBis Working Group and posted as an Internet Draft on 14 February 2014.
Entitled Explicit Trusted Proxy in HTTP/2.0, the standard proposes a mechanism by which an upstream provider – say an ISP – could get permission tosnoop ondecrypt user traffic for the purposes of caching.
Using proxies to cache traffic in the service provider network is unremarkable and uncontroversial: it’s been normal practice for a long time. The end user benefit is better performance; the service provider benefit is a reduction in traffic over their upstream transit network links.
From that point of view, encryption is a pain in the neck: the service provider can’t see into the encrypted traffic, which reduces the effectiveness of its caching strategy.
The Internet Draft has this to say:“To distinguish between an HTTP2 connection meant to transport “https” URIs resources and an HTTP2 connection meant to transport “http” URIs resource, the draft proposes to ‘register a new value in the Application Layer Protocol negotiation (ALPN) Protocol IDs registry specific to signal the usage of HTTP2 to transport “http” URIs resources: h2clr.’”
In essence, to try and protect their ability to cache, the authors of the standard propose that providers seek their customers’ permission to decrypt their traffic (solely for the purposes of offering a better customer experience, naturally).
For some reason, Weinstein finds this proposal outrageous: “The proposal expects Internet users to provide ‘informed consent’ that they ‘trust’ intermediate sites (e.g. Verizon, AT&T, etc.) to decode their encrypted data, process it in some manner for ‘presumably’ innocent purposes, re-encrypt it, then pass the re-encrypted data along to its original destination,” he writes.
Considering that AT&T proposed this, and that AT&T’s record vis a vis illegal surveillance is pretty horrific, I do not see this as a positive proposal.
The FCC Gets Lemons, and Makes An Antifreeze Cocktail
I have a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel………Not!!!!
Because the FCC is unwilling (not unable, just unwillint) to properly classify broadband providers as common carriers, because they are a bunch of wimps have been cowed by, and have bought into, the bankrupt philosophy of the free market Mousketeers, so they have come up with a plan that makes Baldrick from Blackadder look like a genius:
The nation’s top telecom regulator is tipping his hand a bit more on network neutrality.
While FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wouldn’t say outright how he intends to respond to a recent court decision overturning his agency’s rule barring Internet providers from blocking Web traffic, he appears to be leaning increasingly toward using the FCC’s existing legal authority to regulate broadband providers.
Industry watchers say this approach would likely turn on a part of the Communications Act known as Section 706, which gives the FCC authority to promote broadband deployment. Moving in that direction would put more distance between Wheeler and another alternative that’s been floated, which is to reclassify Internet service provders (ISPs) as a kind of utility (making them much more like the phone companies the FCC already regulates strongly).
You see the problem here, don’t you?
What happens when the next Michael Powell, a corporate tool nonpareille ends up running the FCC, and they decide, much as Powell did, that eliminating regulation will magically promote broadband.
This is what has given the United States the slowest and most expensive Internet access in the developed world.
Wanker of the Day: Yale University
Before Plugin After Plugin
Yale has a course selection website, and a two students, Harry Yu and Peter Xu, came up with a personal website that aggregated the ratings so that students could look at ratings and workload when selecting a course.
Yale blocked the site, and threatened disciplinary action against them so another student, Sean Haufler, wrote a Google Chrome shortcut that does this on the fly.
Basically, Yale does not want students to access this data in a coherent way, because, tenured professors who cannot or will not teach do not want students avoiding their courses:
In January 2012, two Yale students named Harry Yu and Peter Xu built a replacement to Yale’s official course selection website. They it called YBB+ (Yale Bluebook Plus), a “plus” version of the Yale-owned site, called Yale Bluebook. YBB+ offered different functionality from the official site, allowing students to sort courses by average rating and workload. The official Yale Bluebook, rather, showed a visual graph of the distribution of student ratings as well as a list of written student reviews. YBB+ offered a more lightweight user interface and facilitated easier comparison of course statistics. Students loved it. A significant portion of the student body started using it.
Fast-forward two years. Last Friday (1/10/14), Yale blocked YBB+’s IP address on the school network without warning. When contacted, Yale said that YBB+ infringed upon Yale’s trademark. Harry and Peter quickly removed the Yale name from the site, rebranded it as CourseTable and relaunched. Yale blocked the website again, declaring the website to be malicious activity.
Later that weekend, Yale’s administration told the student developers that the school didn’t approve of the use of its course evaluation data, saying that their website “let students see the averaged evaluations far too easily”. Harry and Peter were told to remove the feature from the CourseTable website or else they would be referred to the school’s punishment committee.
………
And then it hit the internet:
Finally, Mary Miller, the Dean of Yale College, wrote an open letter to Yale on Friday night. In this letter, she defended Yale’s decision to censor Harry and Peter’s website and course rating functionality, stating:
“[Yale’s course] evaluations… became available to students only in recent years and with the understanding that the information they made available to students would appear only as it currently appears on Yale’s sites — in its entirety.”
Worded less diplomatically, it appears the Dean of Yale College is expressing to students that, “You can use our course evaluation data, but only if you view the data as we tell you to view it”.
(emphasis original)
And there were the inevitable claims of copyright and trademark infringement, and Mr. Haufler came up with his solution:
The story does not end here, however, since there’s a way to distinguish the freedom of speech issue from the copyright claims. What if someone made a piece of software that displays Yale’s course evaluation data in a way that Yale disapproves of, while also (1) not infringing on Yale’s copyrights or trademarks, (2) not storing any sensitive data, (3) not scraping or collecting Yale’s data, and (4) not causing damages to Yale’s network or servers? If Yale censors this piece of software or punishes the software developer, it would clearly characterize Yale as an institution where having authority over students trumps freedom of speech.
Guess what? I made it last night.
I built a Chrome Extension called Banned Bluebook. It modifies the Chrome browser to add CourseTable’s functionality to Yale’s official course selection website, showing the course’s average rating and workload next to each search result. It also allows students to sort these courses by rating and workload. This is the original site, and this is the site with Banned Bluebook enabled (this demo uses randomly generated rating values).
Banned Bluebook never stores data on any servers. It never talks to any non-Yale servers. Moreover, since my software is smarter at caching data locally than the official Yale course website, I expect that students using this extension will consume less bandwidth over time than students without it. Don’t believe me? You can read the source code. No data ever leaves Yale’s control. Trademarks, copyright infringement, and data security are non-issues. It’s 100% kosher.
………
If Yale denies this right, I’ll see you at the punishment committee.
Here’s hoping that Yale backs down. If not, I hope that you talk to the ACLU.
In my day, of course, we had to talk to each other, I recall a materials course, taught by a Professor Clapp, was called “Catching the Clapp,” but I only discovered that after I was half way through the class.
I appreciate the value of tenure, but this should not be a justification for erecting the, “The Great Firewall of Yale.”
It’s not like their jobs are at stake over this, just their egos.
If You are a Disgusting Corrupt Evil Person, a Twitter Q&A is Not Recommended
In this case, it is the woman whose business model is profiting on the misery of our children, former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee who was surprised to encounter a well deserved buzz saw instead cute fuzzy kittens:
Apparently having learned nothing from last year’s #AskJPM and #AskRKelly debacles, controversial education reformer Michelle Rhee announced on Wednesday that she’d be answering questions from folks on Twitter using a hashtag of her own: #AskMichelle.
Anyone who isn’t a complete moron, as well as Michelle Rhee fan Matt Yglesias, realized this, but Rhee, because her evil is only exceeded by her feeling of her self worth disagreed:
@mattyglesias Make a New Years resolution to be positive, Matt! #AskMichelle
— Michelle Rhee (@MichelleRhee) January 15, 2014
Wrong:
.Dear @MichelleRhee, why have you never come clean about the cheating scandal in DC? You preach accountability but take none. #AskMichelle.
— Prison Culture (@prisonculture) January 15, 2014#AskMichelle Why didn’t the StudentsFirstNY canvassers outside my school identify themselves, instead of just asking for signatures?
— Molly Knefel (@mollyknefel) January 15, 2014#AskMichelle @MichelleRhee Do you think kindergarteners should have to take standardized tests? http://t.co/x3e30VDtR7
— Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) January 15, 2014#AskMichelle is it a coincidence that state policies you rank as best have terrible outcomes and are radically right wing? @MichelleRhee
— Sam Knight (@samknight1) January 15, 2014.@MichelleRhee Why aren’t Students First’s donors featured on your website? #AskMichelle
— Prison Culture (@prisonculture) January 15, 2014.@MichelleRhee Why did you support OH’s Senate Bill 5 that stripped collective bargaining rights from all Ohio public workers? #AskMichelle
— Doug Foote (@FooteSteppes) January 15, 2014Why won’t you disclose all your funding sources? #AskMichelle @MichelleRhee
— Mikey Franklin (@mikeyfranklin) January 15, 2014How much $$ do you get from Walmart? RT @MichelleRhee: Im around for a little bit, anyone have any questions for me? Please use #AskMichelle
— Asher Huey (@asherhuey) January 15, 2014Which brand of tape is best for shutting children’s lips? I smell a corporate partnership! #AskMichelle @MichelleRhee http://t.co/YUVdMZwayT
— Brian Thill (@Brian_Thill) January 15, 2014
More on the last tweet in another post.
This could not happen to a more deserving person.
AT&T is Evil, but Thankfully, they are also Stupid
There must be something about their heritage as “Ma Bell” that leads them overplay their hand.
The FCC gave a space for wireless providers, and AT&T jumped full in with a pay for play Internet:
Today, AT&T announced a “Sponsored Data” plan that would put it in a position to pick winners and losers online. This plan would require that Internet services pay to make sure customers are able to view their content by exempting it from data caps. Service providers that can’t meet the price tag that AT&T sets could be left behind.
The following can be attributed to Michael Weinberg, Acting Co-President:
“The FCC needs to protect consumers and creators from internet service providers (ISPs) who want to pick winners and losers online. This is but the latest example of how data caps are increasingly becoming used to threaten the open internet. As AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced in May, data caps are all about forcing content creators to pay and are no longer about any sort of network congestion. In December, Stephenson admitted to investors that they had addressed the network capacity issues that were used to justify data caps in the first place. It is time for the FCC to heed Public Knowledge’s over two year old call to investigate data caps and gather basic information about their use. It is impossible for the FCC to examine the impact of today’s announcement on net neutrality until it develops an understanding of data caps.
“When it was reported in May that ESPN was in negotiations with a major carrier to pay to be exempt from data caps, Public Knowledge highlighted that this was an obvious violation of net neutrality. The company that connects you to the internet should not be in a position to control what you do on the internet. AT&T’s announcement positions itself to do just that.
“In addition to being a ripoff for both consumers and content creators, AT&T’s plan erects a massive barrier in front of anyone hoping to be the next big thing online.”
In addition to the more general philosophical concerns addressed above by Public Knowledge, the Daily Beast observes AT&T’s new business model is primarily an attempt to stop investing in improving its network and start shaking down content providers:
AT&T has proudly moved past the days when the iPhone crashed its network for millions of excited subscribers. In May of last year CEO Randall Stephenson told investors that AT&T anticipated reducing expenditures on its network and that data caps were really about charging content providers He repeated his confidence in AT&T’s network in December.
The sponsored data plan itself further highlights AT&T’s confidence in its network: if the network truly was fragile AT&T probably would not be inviting creators to dump a lot more content onto it. Any problems in the network that exist going forward should be traced back to the fact that AT&T is investing in its special paid access lanes instead of the parts of the network available to everyone else.
Furthermore, even if AT&T is painting an overly rosy picture to investors and deluding itself about its network capacity, monthly data caps are an incredibly inefficient way to deal with momentary network congestion.
But they are a great way to gouge content creators.
And let us not forget that it’s not just AT&T that is trying to junk copper, and replace it with overpriced and limited wireless. Remember how Verizon tried to foist Voice Link™ fixed wireless on the residents of Fire Island, NY?
What about people who don’t live in places like Owings Mills, MD? People who not only cannot choose between Comcast Xfinity or FIOS?
What about poor neighborhoods, or rural neighborhoods, where the Telcos are systematically starving land line infrastructure?
The consumer is going to get F%$#ed over this.