Year 2008

Data Only LLU ADSL από τη Forthnet

Η Forthnet ξεκίνησε τη παροχή ενός LLU πακέτου με μόνον απεριόριστη ADSL πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο (διατίθεται και τηλεφωνική γραμμή αλλά χωρίς πάγιο. Οι κλήσεις κοστίζουν.), ονόματι Forthnet ADSL Economy. Αν μετακόμιζα και έπαιρνα νεα γραμμή, εφ'όσον είχα εξασφαλίσει πως θα είχα σταθερό κύκλωμα ADSL*, μάλλον θα το επέλεγα, δεδομένου του ότι κάνω το 99% των κλήσεων μου μέσω VoIP ή/και κινητού. Ενδιαφέρον. * Σε πάρα πολλές περιπτώσεις τα κυκλώματα ADSL είναι αρκετά ασταθή λόγω α. απόστασης από το DSLAM, β. κακής καλωδίωσης εντός κτηρίου ή/και του ΟΤΕ και (δυστυχώς) γ. κακών ρυθμίσεων των DSLAM από τους παροχείς. Εαν κάποιος σκοπεύει να χρησιμοποιήσει μια γραμμή ADSL για VoIP τηλεφωνία είναι απαραίτητη η εξασφάλιση μιας σταθερής γραμμής πριν την επιλογή ενός data-only πακέτου.

Oh the Irony [2]

Time for a humorous break. Check this 1980s French Apple Computer Inc. television advertisement. It shows an old wealthy businessman showing his company's assets to his son (?) in their luxury automobile while explaining that all this will become his, but he should make the decisions alone because his workers should not think, but only execute as they cannot handle making decisions and should just stick to following orders. The ad ends with the narrator saying that "this is one way to run a company, but fortunately there are others", at which time the apple logo fades in. And this is why for so long so many people thought Apple was an elitist, out of touch company. For many years its products were mostly appealing (in terms of price and marketing strategy) to people exactly like the old man: elitist and wealthy. If the ad were from the late 1970s/early 1980s (before Jobs left), it'd probably be a snipe at IBM --- the 'evil' giant of the time that only had mainframes and micros and dismissed personal computers as toys. Or equally, those that didn't think personal computers could increase the productivity of their workers. In which case it'd make some sense, but still be be laughably ironic, for Jobs' own managerial style is probably more authoritative, selfish and hierarchical than any (based on what's been written about him in numerous books, articles etc.) and would probably make the old man look like an egalitarian-supporting socialist running a cooperative business and making as much as everyone else. But, according to Gruber, the ad came out after Jobs left. It makes little sense: the alternatives to the Mac in the mid to late 1980s, a time of so much competition and so many different architectures and offerings, were more affordable, generally equally productive (at least given the software that was out for a significant part of the tasks people performed at the time) and were definitely accompanied by less arrogant, more pragmatic marketing campaigns, while IBM was clearly far from the all-mighty player in the industry it was half a decade earlier. [via daringfireball.net]

Myspace sans Indie music? Dead.

Heh, if that article is even slightly accurate, I'd be very surprised if Myspace didn't try to do everything in its power to satisfy indie labels and bands. Without them it stands no chance of surviving. None at all, even if it had all four major music megacorps behind it. The competition is so much better and Myspace is mediocre if not poor an implementation.

Comcast. Greedy. Liars. [Updated]

After consistently denying it for months, Comcast just admitted they were throtlling a number of protocols since 2007. After FCC ordered them to abandon the practice in early August, they admitted to throttling traffic using a Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch 8210. The company stated they are going to change the way they manage their network by 2009. According to Comcast spokewoman Sena Fitzmaurice "The new technique does not manage congestion based on the protocol or application a consumer uses. This new technique will ensure that all customers get their fair share of bandwidth every hour of the day". In my view they are lying and greedy and if FCC was doing its job right they should have been fined considerably high for others not to imitate them. Their admission comes almost 45 days after the FCC ruling and proves how much regulation is required to keep greedy businesses in line. Regarding their upcoming 'network management' policy, I'm somewhat puzzled. In particular, I'm not quite sure how they'll ensure a fair share of bandwidth without selective throttling (or any other classification technique that would --- again --- violate the Net Neutrality rules), unless they radically change their offering to a quota-based range of offerings, place relatively low speed caps on everyone for sustained connections or increase their network bandwidth by an astronomical amount. We'll see. Update: ArsTechnica seems to have the details. Apparently the system is going to be use 'shallow packet inspection' and packet-counting triggers for throttling. It does seem ridiculous and completely unacceptable, given that many legitimate applications actually depend on high packet throughput to function properly (VoIP is a good example here). Of course, without first seeing how this works in practice it's hard to judge it, but either way either the FCC will stomp on them once again or the system is going to function without enough disruption to Comcast's (sad) subscribers.

ePrivacy loopholes.

Earlier today, ten days since my return from Brussels, I received an email from Mr. Lambrinidis regarding a number of amendments on the upcoming e-Privacy directive that he contributed to. An interesting topic that I think merits a short post was that of breach notification. Breach notification refers to the situation when citizens whose personal […]

SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX)

The people behind the best HTML engine around (yep, that's WebKit for those that don't know it yet) just announced the next generation of their new Javascript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, just a few months after SquirrelFish itself was announced and before it was even adopted in any product. In the performance chart they posted in the linked page the engine is around 3 times faster than JavascriptCore and two times faster than SquirrelFish. Impressive.

Central planning and Research

Diomidis Spinellis wrote earlier today about the EUs planning priorities for research and how he thinks that’s bad for innovation. I agree with his thesis, but I find his complaint somewhat naïve. Let me explain myself: If I could only give one reason to the question “What’s wrong with EU Funded Research?”, I don’t believe […]

Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα

Στον κόσμο του διαδικτύου δυο ημέρες φαίνεται να είναι αρκετές! Με κάποια καθυστέρηση λοιπόν υποστηρίζω κι εγώ τις θέσεις της πρωτοβουλίας Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα, της οποίας τον δικτυακό τόπο θα βρείτε στο www.publicdata.gr. Είναι ακόμη νωρίς και --- χωρίς αμφιβολία --- οι θέσεις όσο και οι απαιτήσεις των συμμετέχωντων είναι ακόμη ρευστές (όμως και εύπλαστες). Οι βασική ανάγκη παραμένει: τα δημόσια δεδομένα πρέπει να είναι διαθέσιμα σε όλους, δωρεάν είτε αυτά είναι προϊόν του κράτους ή κυβερνητικών υπηρεσιών. Τα πλεονεκτήματα είναι πολλά, η ανάγκη για τα δεδομένα μεγάλη και η ευρωπαϊκή (αλλά και παγκόσμια) τάση δεδομένη. Το διαδίκτυο καθιστά την παροχή αυτών των δεδομένων εύκολη και φθηνή απομακρύνωντας βασικές ενστάσεις που ίσως μπορούσε κανείς να παραθέσει ως εμπόδιο προ εικοσαετίας. Μπορείτε να συμμετάσχετε διαδίδωντας τη προσπάθεια, συμμετέχωντας στην συγγραφή των θέσεων αλλά και στηρίζωντας τη προσπάθεια υπογράφωντας.

Chrome. Another piece in the puzzle

Google just announced Chrome, its own browser based on Webkit, Gears, the V8 VM and a host of features inspired by Opera, Safari and Firefox. The move will no doubt be considered ‘controversial’ by some, given Google’s dominance of the market, but the company seems to have taken many steps to avoid this: everything in […]

Printing Buildings

This is not the first time I'm reading about this; some five years ago I remember reading a related article online or in IEEE Spectrum. I'm somewhat hopeful that the technology will mature soon enough for mainstream use and will be affordable in the parts of the world that proper housing is desperately needed (e.g. Africa, India). It goes without saying that the newly found ease of building should be accompanied by renewed building regulations in order to avoid cases where buildings appear 'overnight' without any building permits authorising their construction. Another concern might be whether architecture could be compromised by the technology in the long-term leading to the replication of a single or few designs destroying the feel and character of cities or regions.