Category Archives: Interesting Items

Things the staff found interesting, or fun.

The Fight over Copyright and Net Neutrality Will Shape the Net

Posted on January 21, 2012 by jnelson

The first battle over copyright on record was an actual physical battle. Around 560, Columba, an Irish monk, copied out a book of psalms, intending to keep it for himself. This was disputed by St. Finnian, owner of the original volume who had lent it to him to read. The saint was supported by the court which said that the reproduction rightfully belonged to him as sure as a calf does to its mother. It being the Dark Ages, there was nothing for it then but to fight it out. Columba’s side won the melee; in grief over the ensuing deaths, however, the monk left Ireland forever. During his lifelong exile, he founded the great monastery of Iona where the magnificent Book of Kells was later made, was the first known witness of the Loch Ness Monster, and ultimately became a saint, too, so it all worked out pretty well for him in the long run. A millennium and a half later, however, copyright conflicts are still being fought almost as viciously in the courts. But while modern media could not even be imagined by the scribes of old, the issues would be quite familiar. Now, as then, the greatest disagreements are often caused by the use of new technologies to do things previously impossible — be it with a goose-quill pen and parchment back then, or mouse and keyboard now. No rational person would disagree that artists should receive … Continue reading →

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Albuquerque’s DSL Dead Zones

Posted on January 13, 2012 by jnelson

Believe it or not, right here in Albuquerque, a 21st-century metropolis that some science fiction writers once imagined as the future capital of the Solar System, there are still many neighborhoods and small areas where it is impossible to get highspeed DSL Internet access. Even more surprisingly, not all of these dead zones are on the fringes of the urban sprawl, either. Some are located right in the busy heart of the city. One such residential dead zone, for instance, is right next to Coronado mall. It’s just a mile or so away from our Uptown office, yet as far as getting DSL service, it might as well be in the middle of the desert. Other DSL dead zones are scattered between Singer and Osuna, along the Jefferson Corridor, out toward Alameda and Los Ranchos, around Yale and I-25 up towards the Sunport, and even up by Juan Tabo and Central. Smaller patches also exist here and there seemingly without reason – one popular coffee shop on Menaul, for example, can’t get DSL at all, yet a vacant lot across the street could be provided with 3-5 MB without any problem. The holes in DSL coverage are not uniform by any means, and there are no helpful maps or listings. In fact, the information above was gleaned from remarks of our installers. But it turns out that there is a way to know. The only way to actually find out … Continue reading →

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Risks and Rewards of File Sharing

Posted on December 9, 2011 by jnelson

Often when people hear the term “peer-to-peer file sharing”, they think of torrents, illegal swapping of the latest movies and music, and resulting lawsuits by the record or movie industries for piracy.  That does happen; however, file sharing encompasses much more than ripping off the latest hits. Peer-to-Peer, or P2P, is the most widely used form of file sharing. It has become a big and growing part of the Internet, already accounting for 50-70% of consumer network traffic, with millions of P2P clients downloaded and in use.  In 2004, an estimated 70 million people were busily sharing files, and doubtless many more now. But P2P is not the only means to share files over the Net. It should not be confused with file hosting, which uses the more familiar client-server architecture of the Internet to stream files to users from big, centralized Web servers. In its purest form, Peer-to-Peer is strictly that: users’ computers directly linked across the Net to their peers; that is, other users’ computers.  They join in a network of equals, each machine devoting some fraction of its computing power, bandwidth, and memory to the network, ideally without any need for a central coordinator. In fact, P2P works pretty much the way the Web was originally intended to function. Collaborative computing Civilization is the story of how ever-larger tasks can be done, and done much more efficiently, with cooperation. As a form of collaborative computing between users, … Continue reading →

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