Hi-Sci-Fi

This image was uploaded with the post US Socialism…At Last!!! - FCC Considering National Wireless Internet.

by Irma Arkus

Today we caught a whiff of FCC finally considering introduction of a free national wireless Internet service.

FCC engineers issued a report concluding that the idea of wireless Internet should indeed may belong to realm of utilities, meaning that its wireless spectrum auctions will go to the highest bidder who will also ensure to offer free, national, wireless internet services. Auctions are estimated to begin at the end of 2009.

Previously auctioned spectrum has reaped high revenues, as T-Mobile paid approximately $4 billion for a set of frequencies.

Thus far, the players in the spectrum auctions have deterred investigations into possibility of a nationalized free wireless internet services, by expressing concerns that these networks would “interfere” with their 3G applications. However, after testing by FCC engineers, it is evident that such interference would not occur.

The revenues that would result from spectrum ownership have not materialized despite the hype. Both European and North American telcos invested heavily into what many experts urged are utilities of the future. Instead of spectrum auctions, perhaps nationalizing part of spectrum and allowing entrepreneurs to use it freely in order to grow a new set of businesses with small capital investments, would ultimately prove to be more beneficial for the economy in the long run. But that’s just my wishful thinking.

For further reading check out “FCC & Google Make Out Session”.

This image was uploaded with the post Star Wars Drunk Driving PSA.

Back in 1979 this little beauty was made warning us all not to drink and drive. Thank-you George Lucas.

by Irma Arkus

I urge all Canadians to take stand against current un-regulated bandwidth throttling by Internet access providers. Current PR war seems to be falling on the wayside of Bell, as they dismiss valid concerns regarding fair competition practices and equal access to material.

According to Bell, the throttling is required to discourage only those few who are siphoning off majority of bandwidth. Still no comments on how they are going to actually achieve transparency of their current unregulated throttling practices.

To Stop Bandwith Throttling, please take a stand: visit STOP THE THROTTLER campaign.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW!

by Irma Arkus

Alex Dragulescu has been doing something fantastic!

This Romanian artist has been turning malware, spyware, spam and variety of other algorithms into art - once mapped they are represented as 3D visual art, resulting in some fetching and intriguing images. Our junk is once again turning into art.

This image was uploaded with the post Computing ART by Dragulescu.

by Irma Arkus

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, was kind enough to join us this past week, and talk about the upcoming changes in Bell and Rogers’ policies of “traffic shaping” or “bandwidth throttling.”

The resulting interview uncovers potential dangers of leaving industry of access providers to their own devices, as these policies impact negatively both the consumers and businesses. For one, CBC’s latest claim to fame, using BitTorrent to distribute their show (which is, by the way, the greatest thing ever) ended in a fiasco as users experienced an extreme delay, resulting in downloads taking up to 11 hours.

This was due to recent bandwidth throttling policies that slow down traffic from certain apps and IPs, BitTorrent in CBC example. As a result, we have access providers that act as content distributors and censors, as they render certain applications virtually unusable.

How do you as consumers feel about these type of policies?

Listen to the interview below.

by Irma Arkus

WARNING: This is no April’s Fools Day Joke.

Virgin Media recently announced that it will disable users from accessing P2P services sharing illegal copyright material. Together with British Phonographic Industry lobby, they will adopt a 3-strikes-and-you’re-out policy.

It is thus far unclear whether they will disable accounts of users who merely utilize P2P services associated with copyright infringements, or are identified as P2P users who are leeching copyright materials.

Either way, Zeropaid provides a valid commentary on the situation, asking public “would UK citizens allow for physical checkpoints whereby corporations are allowed to search their person for copyrighted material? I think not.”

I wish this was an April’s Fools Day Joke, but it isn’t.

ok. long story short - Jevon was missing in action, equipment was malfunctioning, and I was going kind of crazy by my self. Decided to have Damian Kindler on the show, which was a stroke of pure genious. So my lovelies…here it is - the one and only Sanctuary creator, Damian Kindler - a guy who actually figured out what the Internets and Network of Tubes can potentially be used for.

Why now? Because, now that Sanctuary is an amazingly popular show, which has an international cult following, has won a Guiness World Record for the most downloaded show on Earth…now, the networks are starting to pay attention and hoping to purchase the show for broadcast.

Kindler is undoubtedly ahead of the game, and has inserted himself as a major player in a new world of multimedia. His humble steps are a beginning of something much larger and more beautiful than most of us suspect.

Plus, the guy is cool. Why? Well, not only is he smarter than an average TV writer, but his career started by writing precious lines of “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.” And many of you don’t know that, yes, I have watched this, in lonely days of hot Jerusalem summers…on Jordanian TV. Grasshoppers, you have much to learn.

The British parliament are playing hard ball with British ISPs. The government is threatening to push through a bill that would force ISPs to cut internet from people who illegal fileshare or download copyrighted material. This appears as part of a plan to press the ISPs to make a deal with the British Entertainment Industry, which has reportedly stalled over talks of introducing a voluntary program to combat illegal filesharing as it is defined under British Law. According to the article, over 6 million people are estimated to be downloading illegally in the UK. That is a lot of people to start smashing around. There of course is also the problem that has been sited over how to arbitrate things like “piggybacking,” which is when someone uses someone else’s internet connection. There of course is also the issue of proxying, dynamic IPs, and ghosting that makes this idea seem ludicrous. However, the law when taken into context, is merely a ploy at trying to get results out of the negotiations between the Entertainment Industry and ISPs while at the same time indirectly backing an Industry that has writhed around like an aging dinosaur and has been unable to cope with the digital revolution YET AGAIN!

Yahoo has turned down the dowry proposed by Microsoft in a take over that has had many internet watchers envisioning giant monolithic boogiemen stomping over the flow of information and the openess of the internet. Well, that seems to have died down for now as Yahoo has rejected the $40 Billion Dollar take over (say that in your best Doctor Evil voice) as being Too Low. However, according to Ian Maude of Enders Analysis, “This is so important from Microsoft’s perspective there’s a very good chance there will be more money on the table.” In other news, I am counting my change to see what I can purchase for lunch today.

I was kicking back reading “The Information Bomb” by Paul Virilio today, and then this little nugget from the Washington Post popped up on Slashdot. The US Intelligence Officials (yes those bozos) have issued a series of papers and cautionary warnings about the possibility of terrorism moving to the internet in places like Second Life and other online social networking sites. One of the choice quotes is:

“Unfortunately, what started out as a benign environment where people would congregate to share information or explore fantasy worlds is now offering the opportunity for religious/political extremists to recruit, rehearse, transfer money, and ultimately engage in information warfare or worse with impunity.”

Sure sounds like scare mongering, but compare that with the words of Virilio who wrote:

“the spectre of a second bomb is looming at the end of this millenium. This is the information bomb, capable of using the interactivity of information to wreck the peace between nations.”

So basically, all we want is two opposing sides of mad men squabbling over information while the rest of us realize and demand that it stays free and take appropiate steps, like using proxies, to maintain that free flow. However, there is also the spectre of not just cyber terrorism and information bombs, but that of the recent Wired magazine article in volume 16 issue 2 on “griefers.” These are people who “do it for the lulz” and attack players of “games” like Second Life in order to inferiorate them enough into quitting. As most of them say “the internet is serious business” and they revel in annoying people who take things like Second Life and WoW too seriously. After all in Second Life the economy with the “game” is based largely on fictional currency and so therefore griefing literally attacks people for becoming blind to metaphor that “fictional currency” provides. Nevertheless, real currency, such as the example of Eve online, that the article sites in which enormous battleships costing thousands of “real” money can be taken down by hordes of griefers constantly launching themselves at the large ship with small frigates, dying and then going back for more until the pride and fruits of someone’s well earned money is destroyed.
Prokofy Neva, a Second Life land developer and victim of a series of griefer attacks, even describes griefers as terrorists in the article for their targetting of her entrepeneurial ventures in Second Life. The article even sites her declaring griefers “anti-civilization,” who have cost her real US dollars with their attacks that she equivicates with denial of service attacks on a server. The problem is though that the internet never was civilized. It is anti-control, it is anti-order, and although she complains that she has lost money, it is the money that she has tried to inject into the metaphorical realm that Second Life encompasses. In other words, she is trying to inject real world economic principles into the metaphoric illusion that is created in Second Life. The result is the stripping of real world currency down to its essence, which is that of an idea.
At the same time however, as the internet breaks down real world systems and order into ideas, it still serves to bring together different tribes, different peoples, and offers them metaphoric social gathering places in which ideas can be shared, disseminated, changed, mixed, and conjured all at once in a Marshall Mcluhan blender. It is through this that ideas have a method of imposing a sense of order, but it is an order that last so briefly that it fizzles out and dies faster than a 4chan post, or it is eradicated and stripped bare of all of its idealistic baggage. Therefore, it essentially turns the real world ideas into an elementary game of “telephone” for those who are on the other side of the series of tubes trying to pull that idea that we transmitted out into another place in the real world.
In this setting that information warfare has, will, and is occurring, but is impacting the real, or the meat space as so many love to refer to it as. The warfare however, is the violence that we do to information as opposed to the violence that armed groups do in the real world. They can meat online and discuss, but how are they different than any other group of nut jobs and psychotics that meet all the time on place like Second Life? And even if they do meet, the information and ideas that they exchange are subject to the same Mcluhan soup tha starts out potatos and ends up mush.
To my knowledge no real world terrorist attack has been born out of Second Life or internet sites like it, but I just hope that the US Intelligence, who are now and have been nosing around, understand the serious business that is on the internet, and like the griefers understand the vast difference in the games that are being played by those in the meatspace. But also they realize the problem that social interaction online as anonymous metaphoric shape shifting jerks can do when they try to get down and dirty and find the real information and real idea sharing that they consider as a real threat to the real.

An interesting article I ran into today about the growth and popularity of Cellphone Literature in Japan. Novels composed completely with two thumbs on cellphones have become massive best sellers dominating the past year’s publishing market over in the archipelago nation. Although these “novels” are meant for being read on the cellphone or attempt to emulate the cellphone as a form with in the printed page, they do prove to be an interesting step in the art of literature. The novel itself started as being collections of letters or diaries in order to give the illusion and allusion to the real. Here we get a further extension of this process, and perhaps a sign of where writing can go and how it can change.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

GOP candidate Rudolph Guilani, the former mayor of New York, has proposed a true idea of hilarity as well as insanity that thumbs its nose at everything net neutrality holds dear. Guilani proposes ID cards in order to access as well as navigate the internet. We already technically have those in the form of IP addresses that can pin point location in the real world. Nevertheless, even that can be proxied, faked, hacked, and ghosted in order to dynamically change your true IP to something else entirely and retain the true anonymity that is so valued on the internet, and not just on 4chan. what is to say something like this would not be subject to the same realm? For example, even attempts to censor the internet in China, and to outright restrict it in Myanmar, has been met with the resiliency of the technology and the people who use it. Chinese bloggers who have felt not only the wrath of their government, but also being turned in by companies like google, have cleverly used proxies in order to maintain their freedom of anonymity, but also the freedom of their voice. In Myanmar, outside groups have acted as middlemen, and the growth of freely available satellite technology such as google maps, has allowed for not just surveillance, but the continued flow of information. ID cards, such as what Guilani proposes are not only heavy handed and ridiculous, they are ultimately useless. Just like the spice, the information must flow, and flow it will.

One of the Daily Show Writers who is now not working and is now striking has done a brief daily show style spoof/rant for youtube airing his views on being on strike. Comedy and reality gold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzRHlpEmr0w

Ever wanted one for yourself? Well, it won’t cost $100 bucks, starting November 12, it will cost $399 in order to buy one for yourself and one for a child in a “poor” country. Kind of a neat deal, but sort of reminds me of those Christian Children’s Fund, send a child to school and choke them full of rice type deals. Nevertheless, these laptops are pretty awesome and we have talked about them before. They are simple, rugged, completely run on open source software, and have amazing range in terms of their wifi. Check out the offer HERE and the 1 Laptop Per Child Website HERE

This image was uploaded with the post Your Rights: Canadians and Net Neutrality.

Speaking of intellectual complacency, here is a handy guide to how RIAA works.

Just when you thought social networking sites were getting out of hand, fans of ask a ninja, the video podcast that lets you ask a guy wearing a ninja costume, has a social networking site for its fans. Enjoy: Link