Beyond the Code

Moving

2007-05-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

For all those concerned, I'm switching platforms to WordPress. My new url is (predictably enough):

http://beyondthecode.wordpress.com

All future posts can be found there.

The Nebulous Notion of "Computer Literacy"

2007-03-21T12:03:00.005-07:00

Techdirt stumbled onto a problem I think is worthy of note the other day.

Apparently studies have shown that a lack of good IT literacy can have someone waste up to 40 minutes per day. Of course, the real question is how to solve this problem. As the article notes, the answer is in better training for employees -- but it's not yet clear what kind of training is really needed. Perhaps part of the problem is that it's different elements of basic IT skills that are tripping up people and there isn't really one silver bullet for solving all those problems.

I think this presents an interesting paradigm shift that we'll have to make in our day to day language and interaction in the near future. Namely, the question of "are you computer literate" no longer carries any real meaning.

Because computers can be used to do a thousand things, asking if one knows how to use a computer has become akin to asking if one knows how to use an education. To give a meaningful response, the counter question needs to immediately be asked, " well, to do what?"

Several sectors of society have already shifted towards in this direction, asking for competence in specific software packages instead of general literacy. After all, in house a company tends to devote its entire IT layout to Microsoft or Lotus or some other all inclusive package. Without knowledge in that application, an employee would require nearly as much training as one who knew nothing about computers at all.

However the more important shift is a cultural one, one that will move the question of computer competency into the background instead of the foreground. I suppose this will move hand in hand with the gradual shift towards a more ubiquitous computing experience. I know I look forward to the day where computers fade nearly entirely into the background, allowing for free form creativity and action from it's users.

technorati tags:literacy, computing, ubiquitouscomputing

Where's the Counterpoint?

2007-03-20T14:41:00.005-07:00

There has been a lot of media attention paid to the dangers of social networking websites like MySpace and others can create for our children. Such stories often star shady abductors misspelling words and carefully luring children into their web each night, preying on their naivety and innocence. However, as one might expect if one looked at any national or state statistics, abductions have not risen dramatically since the rise of these websites. Nothing terribly significant has occurred since then.

As I watch the one-sided news coverage I find myself asking a question, why aren't their any voices present in the mass media countering this argument? It seems like every good point should have a counterpoint like every story should have (at least) two sides. However, on this issue, the voice of reason seems to be especially lacking in popular media.

It's not lacking elsewhere however. Adam Thierer at The Technology Liberation Front has a new study out, and his most recent post on the subject contains the following counterpoint among others:

A final myth about social networking that I discuss in my paper is that teens are at a much greater risk in these online communities than they were in the offline social communities of the past. It’s clear that part of what is driving the push to regulate social networking sites is that many adults simply don’t understand this new technology and have created a sort of “moral panic” around it. But parents misunderstanding teens—or a new trend or technology that teens love—is really nothing new. For example, today’s grandparents will recall that when they were teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s, their parents worried about their hanging out at burger joints and roller rinks. And today’s parents will remember that in the 1970s and 1980s, their parents were concerned about their hanging around shopping malls and video arcades. Those places were the social networking sites of their eras. And so it continues with the networking sites that today’s youngsters enjoy: digital, interactive websites.

It's an argument that eloquently and politely debunks the hysteria surrounding social networking sites. Hearing it's reason makes me wonder twice as hard as to why this sort of thing isn't heard from the popular media on the heels of each scare story.

If the goal of the news networks is to scare people, I can understand it's absence. However, I think the point Thierer raises here is both simple and engaging. It gets people to think about times from their past (most likely positive ones) and settles their minds a little bit about the future. Thus his argument should have an appeal to most Americans, qualifying it as mainstream material.

Yet it's absence persists. So why isn't it on the nightly news next to the scare stories? Is it too hopeful for society to be more stable than we thought? Is it too complacent with criminals we should obviously find evil and detestable? Is it too reasonable to ask the public to use its intellect instead of its base emotional response?

I don't know the answer, but having taken no journalism or media courses, it's interesting to try and guess from an economic standpoint exactly what influences demand to reach this equilibrium. Does the public desire to be scared and nothing else? Are the network executives keeping the scare stories unchallenged for a reason? Is there greater profit in scaring America rather than informing America? Is there another influence I don't see?

Granted there is challenge to the mainstream ideas in a few public arenas, like some blogs and the handful of debate shows on television, and while I believe those sources are vital to the public discourse, I think their influence simply isn't enough to balance out the presentation in the mass media. So I look to the Nightly News and ask myself again...

Where's the counterpoint?

technorati tags:myspace, news, massmedia

The ATHF Witch Trials

2007-03-16T00:55:00.000-07:00

Let's begin with a picture.

Now for some background.

Recently, a publicity stunt by a late night Cartoon Network show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, caused a big scare in Boston. So reports The Boston Channel:

BOSTON -- Turner Broadcasting plans to take responsibility for the "hoax devices" that were found at sever allocations in and around Boston Wednesday that forced police bomb units to scramble throughout the area.
The incidents were part of a marketing campaign that involved a character from the cartoon show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force.""The 'packages' in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger. They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim's animated television show 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force,'" Turner Broadcasting, the parent company of Cartoon Network, said in a statement.

The company said that they have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland,Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia.Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact location of the billboards, according to the statement, and regrets that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger. The cartoon airs as part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs on the Cartoon Network.It features characters called "mooninites," who were pictured on the found devices. A feature length film based on the cartoon is scheduled to be released late next month.
Gov. Deval Patrick praised the response of law enforcement and said that he was "dismayed to learn that many of the devices are a part of a marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting.""This stunt has caused considerable disruption and anxiety in our community. I understand that Turner Broadcasting has purported to apologize for this. I intend nonetheless to consult with the attorney general and other advisors about what recourse we may have," Patrick said.

Boing Boing picked up the story and ran with it, because the case highlights the conflict between fighting terror in America and preserving freedom of speech. Why did people perceive this image as a terrorist threat? Why didn't they shake their heads and move on? Was it the finger? Was it the blinking lights? Was it the size of the objects? I wonder.

Techdirt also weighed in, noting that if your only anti-terrorism tool is a bomb squad, suspicious objects start to look more and more explosive.

While I don't think that the Boston police department believed in a ridiculous scenario like this video, I do think people overreacted to what they saw as merely unfamiliar and offensive.

Thus leading to my concern for free speech. Having seen several episodes of the show, I wouldn't have been surprised in walking past that picture, but another person may have thought differently. According to Boing Boing, the law being used in this scenario focuses solely on the intent of the devices "to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons."

This seems like a pretty flexible piece of legislation, especially when the intent of the creators gets grossly misconstrued in its transmission to the public. The situation becomes especially tenuous when its the judges who, after the fact, "shall, after a conviction, conduct a hearing to ascertain the extent of costs incurred, damages and financial loss suffered by local, county or state public safety agencies and the amount of property damage caused as a result of the violation of this section." What check is there to keep people from claiming that everything was intended to be a bomb, turning the streets into a scene similar to the Salem Witch Trials (as has been argued by others)?

So in the end, the thing I'd like to see is a calmer, more rational public with regards to terror. It seems like a contradiction in terms, not to mention an impossible feat given the daily amount of terror based news we're supplied with. However, unless we want to start being scanned everywhere we go, having every accessory checked by some Big Brother at every turn, then we better relax and start realistically counting the odds of a terror attack. Otherwise we're in danger of hastily letting go of some of our most treasured liberties.

College Recruitment and Web 2.0

2007-01-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

Ars Technica recently posted an article noting that prospective students are expecting more out of their college recruitment process than ever before.

Students want to feel like they are being incorporated into the campus
community, and many of them therefore wanted personal contact with
faculty and already-enrolled students, not just with admissions
counselors. 83 percent of the high-schoolers surveyed said that they
would read a blog written by a faculty member, while 63 percent would
read one written by a current student, and 57 percent would like to
create a personalized profile page about themselves on the school's
website.

While I agree with a number of the suggestions, especially the student and faculty blogs, if I were an administrator I would proceed with extreme caution. Not just because Web 2.0 is new and scary and different, but because of the nature of Web 2.0 itself.

While the age of user-created content is undoubtedly a good thing, utilizing it in a college recruitment setting takes power from the universities, something I doubt they would approve of. Imagine, if you were in charge of your school's image and didn't have the reputation of Harvard, Yale, or Duke, would you really want to entrust that image to the masses? Especially when talking about individualized web pages on a school's server, things could get unruly very very fast.

Especially since the data shows that students still want to receive information via snail mail, I don't believe that this survey reflects a growing desire for technological use in the recruitment process. Instead, I think that this shows students want to exploit every opportunity to get into their school of choice be they traditional or high-tech opportunities. Raising the bar to apply for a school would presumably weed out more students, giving the ones who really want to get in a better chance.

To sum up, I do believe more communication between the faculty/students and the prospective students has the potential to be a good thing, but it involves an inherent loss of control on the university's part, so we won't see drastic shifts soon, but probably witness a few new ideas come into play each year. Also, I think the survey would've been the same if students were offered simply more options instead of more Web 2.0 focused options.

Shaping P2P Traffic

2006-12-28T23:13:00.000-08:00

Techdirt recently posted about how Internet Service Providers are shooting themselves in the foot. Not that this is surprising coming from Techdirt (and it's certainly justified to an extent), but the issue they raise does give some reasonable food for thought about ISP's traffic shaping P2P traffic.

The funny thing, though, is that whether or not it really is a burden,
the idea of using traffic shaping is absolutely going to backfire. As
we've already discussed, the more ISPs try to snoop on or "shape" your
internet usage, the more that's going to be a great selling point for encryption.
People are going to increasingly encrypt all of their internet usage,
from regular surfing, to file sharing to VoIP -- as it makes it that
much more difficult to figure out what kind of traffic is what and to
do anything with it.

A few things that they didn't explicitly point out I find to be particularly important.

The power of the individual is sticky

It's tough when you're offering a platform like an internet connection. While users constantly search for new applications and uses of their connection and bandwidth, the telcos want things things to stay the same as much as possible in order to provide only what is needed from a willingness to pay perspective, thus earning a predictable, reasonable rate of return on their investments. However when the internet gets involved, that dichotomy is thrown out of balance, because the technology evolves at a breakneck pace, keeping the space virtually unpredictable.
A rising level of human capital will be less likely to tolerate this activity in the future

As reported by Ars Technica, A new poll by Zogby International and 463 Communications showed that most (83%) of the respondents believed that the average 12-year-old knows more about the Internet than do members of Congress. I believe this is more than a matter of perception, and it will spell trouble for the profits of telcos down the line unless they can learn to adapt more quickly to their market. More educated consumers will begin to demand more from their internet connections and will either switch providers, or find ways to make it retain their previous level of functionality via encryption or some other method. This isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean that the present tension from bandwidth hungry consumers is only likely to increase in the future.

In conclusion, I have neither a silver bullet. nor even a particular side in this case. I wish competition were more prevalent in the current broadband space, because as it stands I couldn't switch my provider today if I wanted to. If I could, I think I would get more worked up about the issue of traffic shaping, but at present I'm content to sit on the sidelines and watch the debate unfold for a while longer.

Leave it to the Government

2006-12-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

Via Boing Boing, USA Today has written an article about how the metal used in nickels and pennies has become more valuable than the coins' face values.

Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the
metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based
on current metals prices, the value of the metal in a nickel is now
6.99 cents, while the penny's metal is worth 1.12 cents, according to
the U.S. Mint.
That has piqued concern among government
officials that people will melt the coins to sell the metal, leading to
potential shortages of pennies and nickels.

I don't see this as a sign of a failing economy, but I do see this as an interesting quirk when it comes to money. Because (historically at least) is tangible, it has to be made out of one type of material or another. As inflation rises steadily through growth of the money supply, eventually those materials could become more valuable in raw form than as they money they're coined into.

However, I fully support the government's move here for a very simple reason. Melting down currency of any kind directly changes an the money supply in an economy. Quite frankly, I'm not willing to let individuals, foreign or domestic, be in charge of the money supply of my primary currency.

On a personal level, the value of the money I hold may increase due to falling money supply, but depreciation often is indicative of more harm than good. Additionally, increased volatility in the value of our currency would scare investors away, weakening the economy as a whole.

To briefly hit on a subject too large for one post, this activity serves to bring the currency back to the gold standard, or in this case the copper standard. After a while, the prices of pennies and nickels would re-establish themselves at a penny and a nickel, restoring "convertibility" from the penny to its metal. This would only work in one direction though, because individuals couldn't convert metal back into currency.

It's an interesting topic, with many far reaching ramifications. However, since most of them only serve to destabilize the economy the only suitable option is to leave the money supply in the government's hands. It's better for everyone that way.

Technorati Tags: Money, money supply

Sorry for the Absence

2006-12-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for not keeping up with my blog recently. This year I've taken on more a good deal more responsibility at school and I haven't had the kind of time I was previously taking to write my posts. I think I previously set the standard a little high for myself, expecting each post to be more like an essay than a standard blog post. From now on, I'll likely be publishing more often but with slightly less depth. Again, sorry for the absence.

Rational Irrationality: Why I flew home thirsty

2006-08-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

There are often times when the government seems to be acting out of control.

Recently, as you can read about anywhere, there was an incident in Heathrow
where a joint-venture between US and UK forces arrested twenty some odd
terrorists who were planning to blow up an airplane, reportedly with explosives
concocted onboard as separate liquid ingredients.

This occurred two days before I was supposed to fly home.

I was not happy.

Now I wasn't afraid of potential terrorist attacks. Flying just after an
incident like that is one of the safest possible times to fly, what with a
heightened sense of awareness present in all the passengers and security
personnel. However, without bottled water onboard (now deemed a dreaded "liquid",
I couldn't get a drink as often as I wanted to, and being a person who drinks
more water than most, the result was one of the most uncomfortable flights I've
ever been on. I could literally feel my eyes drying out as the hours
dragged on.

As many have pointed out, virtually no safety is gained by these extra
security measures. It's impossible to exactly predict how a terrorist will
strike next because they can choose from a virtually infinite number of
terrorizing attacks. So preparing in accordance with the last attack does you
virtually no better in terms of actual safety than before.

However, when I sat down to think about it, I realized it was the most
rational option for the government to take.

To give it an over-generalized definition, let's say the government's purpose
is to provide for the people so as to make them as happy as possible. As a loose
framework of happiness, we'll go with Maslow's hierarchy of needs (thanks as
always wikipedia). Safety is the number two priority, and as a result the safety
of a government's people is pretty high on the government's list of things to
do.

However, plane travel is already extremely safe. The phobias and fears people
associate with flying have nothing to do with actual mortality, hijacking, or
bombing rates. Most of these fears stem from a lack of control about one's own
fate and having it instead rest entirely with the pilot (or God, or science, or
whatever that person believes to be the most powerful player in his or her fate
outside his or herself in this case). To someone with those fears, even the best
odds are of negligible comfort, despite those odds being better than, say,
driving a car for ten miles on the interstate.

Given that these fears are irrational and based solely on inconsolable fears
(after all, we can't all be piloting the plane... someone has to go
along for the ride), the government then needs only to make people feel safer in
order to keep their leadership ensured. In that context, the more intrusive the
method, the better it is. Put simply, broadcasting more sound bytes about
fighting terrorism abroad through increased intelligence (which is by far the
best way to actually fight terrorists) won't ring sharp enough in many people's
ears. On the other hand, ban all substances from planes possibly considered a
liquid and then the people suddenly feel like something's "being done."

Consider it from the government's financial point of view, they can pay
simple money for more screeners, the National Guard, and let the program
virtually be its own PR. The newstations will undoubtedly run with the story
without any prompting whatsoever. Choosing to increase intelligence though,
would require a lot more effort in spreading the message as well as training all
those highly skilled workers in espionage. The effects then wouldn't be seen, or
more importantly, felt by the people. The government would then be blamed not
for its over-reaction, but for its idleness. Not far behind would be a political
nightmare of being accused of being weak on national security.

And in an election season, no incumbent can afford to look like he doesn't
care about the safety of his constituents.

So I watched a lady who spoke terrible English and excellent French empty out
her purse in shock as her lip gloss, and mascara, and other items were thrown in
the trash one by one. I sat sandwiched into the window, with my eyes too dry to
read or sleep and no flight attendant close enough to ask for water for hours. I
muttered under my breath in anger as I outlined this article, knowing full well
that the entire security upgrade was a ruse, simply designed to get that extra
"good feeling" out of the public. I don't like dishonesty, and claiming that
these measures will help make our airports more secure is a flat out lie. Unlike
other government policy changes I read often about, this time I felt the cost
of the government's publicity stunt personally, and it cost me one of the few
things that make flying bearable to me, at zero gain to my sense of safety (or
sanity).

In short. This extra security makes me mad.

...and more than a little thirsty.

Technorati Tags: TSA, security, airport, terrorism

Some thoughts on the RIAA

2006-07-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, I've been confused about this for a while now. If you read Techdirt or Ars for any length of time, you will invariably run across a story about iTunes, or DRM, or Microsoft's upcoming Zune. But what will be mentioned in nearly all of these articles is how unhappy the record labels are with Jobs' flat-rate pricing. This is a position.... that quite honestly confounds me.

First, let's ignore the irony that because the RIAA's imposed DRM upon all digital download retailers, it granted Apple the very monopoly it's now fighting against.

Second, I can understand the motivations of the RIAA. As a trade group of record labels, they want to make as much money for themselves as possible. And hey, we all want to earn our way somehow. However, it appears that the RIAA in particular goes about it a bit less than completely honestly, like when they attempted to rewrite copyright law to make all songs from artists classified as "works made for hire" in essence drastically swinging the balance of power in favor of the record labels. Read up on the 1999 case, its worth reading (and noting that they lost).

On to the present. So the record labels want variable pricing. I understand that the economics would work out so that price discrimination on the more popular content would capture more of the dead weight loss as opposed to a flat pricing scheme given a sloped demand curve. And that's presuming all the content is bought equally. Given that popular content is bought more often, the numbers would probably add up even higher than simple dead weight loss for the labels. On the other hand, if consumers start to expect to pay only a dollar for the newest hit song, the reduced expectations will shrink the aggregate demand curve, which is bad any way you slice it for the labels.

But... ummm... that's on the retail supply and demand side of the equation. As I understand it, the labels are engaged in wholesale trade, licensing music to Apple. Last I checked, they can't dictate Apple's prices... I'm pretty sure that's illegal... price fixing or something of the sort. However they should be able to price discriminate themselves, license music to Apple at whatever cost they like. Normally it would then force Apple to raise its prices in turn, but apparently selling music as a loss leader changes your outlook on things.

Or... music licensing could be a flat fee regulated by the government. In which case the RIAA's actions would make much more sense.

I don't have the time to research this one thanks to the increasing difficulty of Japanese in these next few weeks. Can anyone shed some light on this subject? I'd very much appreciate it.

Technorati Tags: DRM, RIAA, iTunes

Times are Tough

2006-07-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I have to put up another post that makes an excuse for a long delay in posting. For those that don't remember, times as a student are hard. For those who haven't taken Japanese as a foreign language, I'm afraid I'll just have to make vague allusions to its massive difficulty, because getting into the nuances of indirect passive humble verb conjugations probably wouldn't make any sense. I know they wouldn't have to me before I took this language.

That said, I do have some posts planned, no telling if I'll get to them though. I find it hard to simply cite a source and comment for a few sentences about it. I like to write longer mini-essays, but it seems that isn't very conducive to a busy everyday life. Ah well.

However, for those interested in a view of the world's state of affairs as can be applied to nearly every international situation right now be it the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, or another headline worthy story, check out Sam Harris' The End of Faith. It's been my gym reading for the past week and I'm not sure if I'll post on it or not, but it's certainly something worth kicking around if you've never read it.

I think that's all for now.

Cost/Benefit: A Rolling Stones Article

2006-07-03T03:32:00.000-07:00

I got an email from the organizers of a leadership retreat I'm going to this fall a few days ago. Among the suggested readings was a recently published story in Rolling Stone magazine. To summarize briefly, the article made me very angry and forced me to take a walk before I could think clearly about what the implications of it were.

There are arguments against the factual accuracy of the piece on multiple levels ranging from sample size to the near exclusive use of hearsay as evidence. However, I want to look at this piece from an economical incentive point of view. Whether it made me angry or not, did this piece accomplish its goal as an article in Rolling Stone Magazine?

Part one of answering this question lies in discovering what its goals are to begin with. After checking several sources, I couldn't find an exact mission statement or declaration of purpose. In fact, the wikipedia page contains neither of these phrases in the entire entry. All wikipedia does provide on the subject is the following:

Rolling Stone is an American magazine devoted to music and popular culture.

This definition is open to two very different interpretations. The first says that Rolling Stone is a magazine devoted to reporting on music and pop culture. The second is that Rolling Stone is a reflection of popular culture (as borrowed form the Daily Nebraskan piece). The difference lies in that the first interpretation holds the magazine to a higher standard of factual accuracy, ie. The New York Times, whereas the second does not, ie. The National Enquirer.

The homepage of the magazine yields no real clues either, mixing in headlines of "Prez Bush Considers U2 Karaoke Career" next to a sit down interview with Al Gore on global warming. So, in absence of a stated purpose otherwise, I'm going to assume that the purpose of the magazine is simply to make money. Further I'll presume they decided there market to be arts and pop culture fans, and for extra credit I'll say that the magazine didn't start this way, but in the context of when the Duke article was written, this is the sole mission of the magazine.

Popular culture magazines should want to write about popular topics. As is appropriate, the article ties together a University recently in the news (Duke), along with its perceived problem (the sexual landscape), together with recent controversial book releases (Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons), and even throws in some pop movie references (American Psycho). As such, the article has sufficiently covered popular topics and is worthy of inclusion in the magazine.

With appropriate references in hand, the article should then catch readers in some way. While many approaches exist, this author chose to utilize the idea of indecency to shock his readers. I would have to say that his approach is affective, in that while I stormed out of the room after reading the article, I did make a point to finish it. If the article angers a few (duke students and alumni) in the process of hooking many more in the story (the rest of the country), then the article has struck a good balance in attracting readers.

More readers turn into more copies of the magazine sold, and more copies sold means more profit. In terms of cost and revenue, the revenue generated by the story is significant.

The costs of the piece are harder to measure. There will be several from Duke who may refuse to purchase the magazine due to its less than shining appraisal. Others will find that the lack of journalistic quality will signal a degradation in the entire magazine and chose to put the magazine down for good. The reputation of the brand Rolling Stone has to be considered well, though one relatively minor story shouldn't pose too much of a negative impact on the brand's power. All in all, the costs are minimal as compared to revenues.

So, I must conclude that the "Sex & Scandal as Duke" article is an article which fulfills the aims and purposes of its employers. I applaud Janet Reitman's writing in generating profit for her employers.

With the analysis done, I'll go ahead and say on a personal note that I utterly hate this piece. I find it disingenuous, inaccurate, full of false assumptions and misleading statements, sensational, and missing key parts of Duke life that clearly relate to her story, such as the movement that works very hard to directly combat what she observes. I for one have never subscribed to the Rolling Stone, and don't intend to in the future.

Note: I picked this piece to analyze on purpose, precisely because I'd have to have a very level head and rely on my logic to come to a conclusion.

Technorati Tags: Duke, Rolling Stones, Journalism

Misunderstanding Net Neutrality

2006-06-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

Senator Jim DeMint (the one I worked for last summer) is proposing an amendment as a possible addition to the up and coming telecommunications legislation, S. 2686. The amendment appears to extend the language of net neutrality from the broadband ISPs to including internet search engines. As reported by Multichannel News:

Under the DeMint amendment, it would be unlawful to prioritize or givepreferential or discriminatory treatment in the methodology used todetermine Internet-search results based on an advertising or othercommercial agreement with a third party.

The wording would strike directly at Google's sponsored links, where companies pay to get preferred space whenever people search for terms related to their products. Sponsored links are the links placed at the side of the page, distinctly set apart from the unsponsored links that PageRank returns.

Now first, I know Senator DeMint does not believe in this amendment (not in an insider way, but in a gut feeling sort of way). He has already spoken out against Net Neutrality on principle, his justification being that he is a firm believer in the free market (making him one in a group of people whom I've already recommended should leave the net neutrality debate). This must mean that DeMint introduced the amendmentnt proposal to simply make a point. Personally, I think if he has a point to make then he should just say it. To go through the trouble of writing out an amendment you don't believe in is a waste of time and effort.

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, DeMint caught the attention of James Gattuso who felt the need to write a post about it. Gattuso also thinks the amendment is designed to simply put pressure on Google because of its "uncomfortable position in the net neutrality debate." He goes on to critique Eric Schmidt's "Note to Readers" (read it first, it's short) by turning the tables on Google:

But take out the reference to "phone and cable monopolies" and this reads like a critique of Google itself. Google's business model to a large degree is based on tiering, providing preferred ad placement for those who can pay for it. Its clearly not a system where anybody "no matter how large or small" has equal access. Its based, like it or not, on money.

Gattuso's commentary has two glaring problems:

The Net Neutrality debate at its core has nothing to do with the true equality of all packets or offers or links or really anything of a technical nature. The core of the debate (that not enough people seem to want to address) is the lack of competition in the broadband space, just as myself and others smarter than me have already said. By contrast, competition is fierce in the search engine market, and contrary to what Gattuso says, being the market share leader does NOT give you monopolistic powers. If Google screwed up in a big way tomorrow by changing their policies or procedures, you can bet they would become the least used search engine within the week.
Gattuso repeatedly points to the ability to pay nature of Google's sponsored links program as some sort of fault. What he fails to realize is that Google is at heart and advertising company. They provide an amazing service for free (the ability to search for most anything) with the hopes that you'll click on one of their sponsors ads whose links are usually very closely related to what you were searching for to begin with. Advertising space has always been based on the ability to pay principle and price discrimination. If you want Super Bowl commercial time, then you have to pay exorbitant amounts of money. If that's your logic, then why single out Google when it's simply a more efficient online version of an already established legitimate business?

Watchful of what goes on at his own posting home grounds, Tim Lee responded to Gattuso's post. Lee's main point was that Broadband companies aren't stupid, and that they'll use whatever means necessary to make the most money. Unlike what some proponents of net neutrality believe, Lee doesn't believe the ISPs will block any specific web site or content type:

I think it's safe to say that Verizon, Comcast, et al want to make as much money as possible. So here's my question: If you were a telco executive trying to maximize revenue from your shiny new fiber network, how would you set your prices?
Here's one thing you wouldn't do: set a flat rate of $100 million for any company wanting to access your "fast lanes," and consign everyone else to the slow lane. It's quite true, as Schmidtz says, that such a policy would screw up the Internet and stifle entrepreneurship. But it's also a really stupid strategy, because it forgoes a lot of
revenue from smaller companies. And although none of them individually can pay as much as Google or Microsoft, they're likely to make up the majority of revenue opportunities, thanks to the long tail.

I couldn't agree more, and this is highlights another problem of the net neutrality debate. The two sides aren't listening to each other in order to find a middle ground. The opponents of new regulation believe all regulation is bad by its very nature, while the proponents paint a picture of the ISPs as intrinsically evil monolithic businesses. Due to my previous post on this issue, I'm going to refer to it from here on as the comic book effect.

However, I have a problem as Lee he continues:

No, if you're a monopolist trying to maximize revenue, you want to charge the big guys a lot more than you charge the little guys. How do you figure out who's a big guy and who's a little guy? A straightforward metric is the amount of traffic they generate. Charge 10 cents per gigabit, say. Google pays millions. The startup with a
thousand customers pays pocket change.
Now, I can envision all sorts of variations. Maybe big guys would get some kind of bulk discount so their per-bit costs are a bit lower. Or maybe they'll really soak the big boys, while they let the smallest companies ride for free (after all, their tiny bills might not be worth the trouble to collect, and today's small companies are tomorrow's
large companies).

I have no problem with his logic, but from what I understand, this is more or less how business is already done today. Anyone reading feel free to correct me, but from what I can tell business pay for the bandwidth that flows out of their website to individuals. However, in several statements made by the telcos, they seem to think there's a part of the network that the content companies are "riding for free."

This is the argument you may have heard where pundits argue what exactly people pay for when they pay for their internet. Do they pay to get to the "internet cloud," or do they pay to get straight to what they want to see like Google and Yahoo? The ISPs subscribe to the internet cloud theory, and thus see the part of the connection that connects the customers from the cloud to the content companies as "a free ride."

I hate this argument. At its simplest level, it claims the telcos deserve more money by simply redefining how they think the internet pricing model works. If they offered some sort of service, it wouldn't be so bad... but it's simply a greedy grope for more money, and I don't think they should get away with it.

Let's look at a parallel situation where only one credit card is available in your town. You pay to use the card via fees, and the companies pay for the convenience of being able to take the credit card. Some only need a hand operated reader, while others like McDonalds need the fastest and most efficient swiping machine possible. The credit card company now decides that you haven't actually paid to use the card at any restaurants, but rather you've simply payed for credit availability, a connection to the money charging cloud. They then decide McDonalds is getting a free ride because you payed to get to the cloud, but no one payed to get your money from the cloud to McDonalds, so they demand that companies pay for that part of the connection as well. With no other credit card to switch to, the companies either pay up begrudgingly, or take the issue to Congress (just as net neutrality advocates are doing now).

The key to both the real and fictitious scenarios is that competition is virtually or actually non-existent. Because competition doesn't exist, customers have nowhere to go. The market then can't take care of itself, and is subject to monopolistic influence. Some people are already on the topic, and it has started to come up in major debates.

As we debate net neutrality in congress we have to remember there is a balance to strike. Simply charging more and abusing monopolistic power is bad, but the radical equality of packets approach isn't ideal either. Video and voice do have lower latency requirements to be viewer satisfactory, but that should simply mean that there is opportunity for investment in expansion of the network, not that any particular group of companies is getting a freebie out of something they didn't pay for. We have to stop anticompetitive practices by the ISPs as well, though current legislation should e enough to cover that. Perhaps I'll go into more detail with that another day.

I just hope we can properly flush out these issues as the telecom legislation comes closer to passing. Listening will be the most important skill we can use in the near future, because the Internet needs room to grow, but if either of these sides wins in entirety, it will lead to a fundamentally more crippled internet than the one we have now.

Note: I'm having some trouble with my blogging tool. Certain phrases were written over and none of my punctuation marks made it in the transfer. I tried to edit everything back to normal but please let me know if I missed anything glaring.

Technorati tags: Net Neutrality, internet

Structure Update: RSS and Email Subscriptions

2006-06-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

I've added some RSS buttons and the ability to subscribe to my blog via email right on the sidebar for all those interested. There's more in the works both content and layout wise, so stay tuned in the days to come.

Changing the Face of Politics: Email and the FCC

2006-06-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

To start, I worked in Senator Jim DeMint's office for half a summer between freshman and sophomore years of college (summer of 2005 for anyone interested). The experience was an amazing one, learning how we process opinions from constituents, going to hearings on issues that matter, and watching people make decisions that affect everyone in both the country and the world.

One of my primary jobs as an intern was sorting the mail which came in several times a day (three if memory serves correctly) into the wall of mailboxes that lay before me. As is typical I'm sure, different people handled different areas of policy. These Lower level workers reported to a head person in their field. The policy gurus converged to a single advisor who then reported directly to Senator DeMint. If a given piece of mail was important enough, it would travel all the way up this chain, but rare did a piece of mail like that come in.

The least important pieces of mail came in the form of mass faxes/emails. These form letters came in by the hundreds every day, with several often under the same name, and all of them coming from a single source. I was told that interest groups sent out tons of these letters every day in an attempt to influence Senator DeMint by showing support of the people for a one policy initiative or another.

As an intern these were good pieces of mail, because they were the easiest to sort into a mailbox, and they came in huge stacks of the same letter. So in one swift motion, the pile of mail to be sorted could shrink as much as an inch or more.

Many interest groups use this tactic, from the conservative Parents Television Council to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Again, I find their purpose to be subverted by their tell tale manufactured style. I would think that any reasonable person could tell that these were cheaply written and mass produced. There is no way each incarnation of the letter could represent a unique voter's opinion.

Now, on to news. Ars Technica pointed out this week that CBS is complaining about an indecency fine imposed by the FCC for an episode of Without a Trace which aired in 2004.

CBS affiliates are now protesting the fine against them, arguing that all 4,211 e-mailed complaints about the show came from [the Parents Television Council's] site and from one run by the American Family Association (which claims that more than 70,000 complaints were submitted; it's difficult to reconcile these two numbers). The CBS stations argue that such complaints are inappropriate and invalid.

I have no problem with these two utilizing any tactics within the law to get their message across. I'm only worried that the FCC felt that the complaints from these two sources were enough to justify a federal response(pdf). Discounting the objection that the most of the complainants never saw the clip in question nor the show itself, the fact that a few thousand emails can cause this response from the FCC prompts some thinking about both its security implications and its implications on democracy as we know it.

Security

Granted, the job of the FCC requires them to pay more attention to complaints than Senator Jim DeMint's does, but I've seen countless examples of the form letters that get sent to the government from these groups, and they are ridiculously easy to spot. Surely the FCC understands that each of these impersonal letters doesn't count for a unique individual's opinion on the issue.

How many emails were sent, ranging anywhere from 4.2k according to the FCC to 70k according to the AMA, is not a big difference for a few computers and a database of names. Given a few hours, either result can be readily produced. Thus, if the FCC will let itself be swayed by the number of emails it receives, how long will it take before someone learns to exploit this concept and threatens to sic the FCC on various content companies unless they change something more to the extortionist's liking? It's doable today, even if I don't think it's very likely. And the reason I don't find it likely deals with the democratic implications of the issue.

Democracy

Email is an amazing new technology, enabling us to connect to one another across the globe in a faster and more convenient form than ever before. Its potential abuses are worrisome though, especially in a society like ours that wishes to value the individual opinion. If an individual's voice can be duplicated and changed slightly after each copy by a machine to be passed off as a choir of voices, then the balance of power in our government has the potential to shift dramatically from the many to the few. To relate it to what people may be more familiar with *depressed sigh* it's like when geeks make machines to place an American Idol vote thousands of times in one night. Now replace American Idol with the US government and the geeks with terrorists or special interest groups.

Aside from the Idol affect, there appears to be another force at work here. If the FCC heard all email campaigns equally, they'd be a busy organization. Granted, to an extent they are constantly busy, but it seems that they listen to the PTC and the AMA more closely than they listen to other grassroots campaigns, like the EFF's DMCA reform campaign. This no doubt comes in part because there is no significant lobby against the PTC whereas the EFF takes on many active and very influential competitors in each of its complaint campaigns. After all, companies with deep enough pockets will pay whatever it takes to impose their business model into legislation, whereas few people are going to lobby that more sex on TV is a good thing for America.

However, I'm afraid of giving these two groups in particular control over the morality that comes through my TV screen. Last I checked we have a lot of competition in terms of television content. What's the upper limit on channels we can receive these days? 900? These days, no one is forced to watch anything on TV, and market forces will assure that if some content is too far out of line, they'll receive repercussions from people tuning out. Even for extremists, who think that television is too indecent on every channel (which is very unlikely), no one forces them to watch television at all. They can simply turn it off.

But coming back around a bit, how should emails be treated by the FCC? An email is more convenient for an individual to send, and I think an email written from scratch should be just as valuable as a handwritten letter. That said, I think the FCC, and the entire government for that matter, should implement a policy in which they won't accept pre-written emails anymore. If I had my way, I'd extend it to the flimsy postcards the AARP gets their members to send out en mass as well, but I'll stick to the email point, because email could be screened electronically, saving some manpower on top of the other benefits.

After that, I'd watch as the number of complaints from these organizations drops into the ground. I think the policy would work because the distinction between "Click here to send a letter to your Congressman" and "Click here to Compose a Letter from Scratch to Your Congressman" is large enough that the potential abuses of the system would be minimized while at the same time letting the technology grow and express appropriately how we feel in the matters of state.

Technorati tags: FCC, email, politics

Update: For those who want further reading on the subject, or want to look at specific numbers regarding indecency complaints and the FCC, Adam Thierer has pointed me to a great report(pdf) he put together for the Progress and Freedom Foundation last December. Check it out.

A Cheer for Comics and a Moan for America pt. 2

2006-06-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

Now, I saw this at Duke during my last few days of the semester, before I'd started the blog. However, if it's important enough for WIRED News, it's important enough for me to glance over.

This comic book comes out of the Duke Law School, put together by three professors and named Bound by Law?: Tales From the Public Domain. Fortunately, the comic book doesn't seek to slant the issue of today's copyright one way or the other. Despite its cartoonish appearance, it takes a very reasonable and measured approach to educating people about copyright. From the WIRED article:

Wired News: Who is the audience for this book?
James Boyle: Our first audience is documentary
filmmakers and film students. But we're also trying to reach people who
might not think of themselves as documentary filmmakers, people who
have video blogs for example, who are using digital tools and editing
software to put things online.
But beyond that, there's a larger audience of people who are
interested in the effect of copyright on culture, in the free-culture
movement, people who are interested in what a world without gatekeepers
might look like.

They note that documentaries have come under fire lately for copyright infringement, and that these are the instances where people can most easily see what's wrong with the system. Instances where $10,000 had to be paid for the rights to a four second clip in the background of one scene. Or another documentary maker payed an equal amount for a ringtone that went off during the scene. The tune? The Rocky theme.

I have a lot of respect for the professors whose aim is to make copyright accessible and understandable to all. Without the slant and ridiculousness of Captain Copyright or The Corruptibles, and after some serious thought, I'm going to praise the three Duke Law Professors. Unlike before where I pointed out that the comic book nature of the propaganda simply skewed the debate, this books informs through examples that are well documented and covered outside of the comic. It notes the importance of copyright, expressing a clear and cogent opinion of how much control copyright owners should have.

This comic gets to the heart of the issue, without making any overly ridiculous claims and both furthers general knowledge and encourages discussion on the concept of copyright. So I cheer for the three Duke professors. May their presentability of ideas and honest dialogue become infectious and spread to other contested issues that need real debate so badly.

Technorati tags: copyright, Duke, Captain Copyright

A Cheer for Comics and a Moan for America

2006-06-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

Alright, I understand. Techno-political issues aren't everyone's thing. The issues themselves can be hard to understand, and often those who summarize their view slant it so far to one side or the other it becomes comical.

....literally.

While they target different audiences and thus have slightly different purposes, the largest supporters and opponents of stronger copyright protection have released... I kid you not... their own superhero comics, Captain Copyright and The Corruptibles.

Now Captain Copyright came out first, and has already come under fire for his questionable... err.... copyright policy. That's not to say anything of the talk that he is a plagiarized work himself and that he lifted content straight from wikipedia without attribution.

The Corruptibles are created by the EFF and by contrast are aimed at adults. Once the cartoon is over, more in depth information about their side view of copyright can be found within a few clicks.

I admit, I enjoy clever marketing. The ability to turn heads for long enough to deliver a simple message is no easy task. A task many are paid lots of money to do for a living. And yet, I'm sad that both sides of this important issue which needs to be discussed honestly and openly are turning to slanted comic books in order to sway public opinion. It reminds me of the criticism John Stewart made about the show Crossfire (watch it, it's worth it) where both sides don't actually debate about anything so much as simply yell their talking points at each other until someone goes hoarse first.

I guess the side still talking can chalk that up as a win, and somehow it has more value as such than a compromise, but it just doesn't sit right with me.

The implications of new copyright legislation are too great for either side to win outright. A compromise must be reached. Hopefully it'll fall somewhere in between the extremes so that consumers still have what we enjoy today under fair use, while the artists still get their fair share (and not necessarily through the established business models that exist right this minute).

Life is not black and white. Politics are not left and right, nor conservative and liberal, nor Republican and Democrat. I'm worried by the growing trend of polarization that simplifies the issues so the public can easily sift through each one. It may be easier for the average Joe to choose a side, but it comes at the expense of talking about and developing a solid middle ground. But... that's a more detailed post for later.

For now, let's just say I left comics for novels years ago. I'm sorry to see the trend going the other way in the one arena where we most need debate..

Technorati tags: Captain Copyright, copyright, DRM

Record Labels V. XM: An Issue of Quality?

2006-06-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

A suit has been filed recently against XM radio from four record labels. Take some time to read up on it here, here, here, and here. I had a discussion with one of my hallmates last night trying to understand why the labels would do such a thing. I don't think he had any real support for his position, and I may not do it a wealth of credit here, but I think it's something worth discussing.

My friend, let's call him Steve, said that the big issue that concerned the record labels was one of quality. The logic is as follows... Sure you can record music off the radio, but that quality sucks, so it's ok. Digital recordings from a satellite provider are digital and thus by their nature have all the quality that digital can offer. So the record labels must want compensation for that, right?

As a bit of background, Steve is far from unfamiliar with technology. He has a modded Xbox, already owns an Xbox 360, downloads music, has a hacked phone, etc, etc. What worries me is that Steve's logic makes sense on a very intuitive level, especially to those not familiar with the case and the bigger picture of the recording industry as it stands today. I believe this intuitive yet faulty argument, for one, presumes that we've always been able to record radio, ignoring the battle nearly identical to the one today that took place when tape recorders hit the scene, allowing people to record songs off the radio. Tapes were being sold at the same time in music stores, with a noticeable, but not too distinct difference from radio recordings. So the quality argument has to be insignificant. In fact, the devices in question are far more safe for the recording industry than the old tape recorder, because the recorded songs cannot be transferred away from the mp3 player, unlike tapes which at the time could be plugged into home stereos, kept in the car, or given to your girl/boyfriend.

My argument was that this lawsuit is basically the tape recorder argument all over again. Except, since the labels lost on the tape front, they've shifted focus to the digital front. The claim is that XM has turned into a more mobile iTunes, because the consumer ends up with mp3s on their portable device regardless which service they use. These files kept on the device can be replayed at will and are certainly no longer part of radio broadcasting. So they must have been distributed to users, an act which requires double the licensing fees XM already pays (which are actually the highest of any company thus far).

I have to disagree with the recording industry in this case. I favor XM in large part because I own an XM receiver. It's nice being able to have greater choice of what to listen to and not having to change the channel on long road trips from home to school and back again (4 hours each way). As a customer, I've also experienced the difficulties, and they're all identical to radio. Sometimes the signal is bad, and sometimes there's just nothing worth listening to at the moment. With XM established as radio, it should follow that recordings of its' broadcasts should be protected under fair use.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't see anything immoral or inhuman in the labels' actions. They are entitled to seek profit like all other businesses. Sure it gets sticky when intellectual property is involved and lawsuits allow companies to demand outrageous fines in damages (with sums that equal twice the labels' gross revenue), but everyone's entitled to try and get their piece of the pie.

That said, there are a number of practices the record labels have been employing which I don't like. I don't like claiming more than twice in damages than your company generates in revenue. I don't like pressing on with lawsuits against people who don't know how to use a computer, or who would have to drop out of school to pay the fines. I don't like raising the price of music over the years as the production costs have continued to go down, and then acting stunned as a grey and black markets emerge to cover the market you've shut out. I don't like claiming that the artists need to be fairly compensated when they see as little as 7% of revenue from music sales (7% specifically from iTunes). I don't like that because of the increasing expenses of courtroom battles, big companies can use monopolistic power and resources to outpay every challenger (or at scare most of them away).

When it's all said and done I worry though, because if people don't understand the larger issue of the recording industry trying to scrape for every dollar (deserved or not), and instead think that there's some semblance of credibility in their actions because of a discrepancy in quality, then the outcome would be based on dishonest and inaccurate foundations. I simply don't believe that that's how business should be done.

Technorati tags: XM, RIAA

Perfect Competition

2006-06-10T15:53:00.000-07:00

Perfect competition requires five things according to answers.com:

1. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price-takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.

Granted, it's not really fair to compare any real market to a fictitious one, but it's worth noting that this is the basic idea of economics. When many free market thinkers and various pundits are referencing competition, this is what they mean. They understand it's not attainable, but they believe any step in this direction is a good thing. While we're on the topic, the benefits of perfect competition are quite impressive; low prices, high quality, basically everything a consumer could want. That's why those thinkers reference competition this way. They want it to feel good whenever it's mentioned.

Perfect competition is good, don't get me wrong. I think competition is almost always a good thing as well. However, in the context of this debate, there has been some talk of already having enough competition in the field (or at least presumptions thereof) to ensure that consumers rights and priviliges will be protected by market forces. I think that's far from accurate, what with the somewhat less than infinite broadband ISP's out there.

More soon.

Net Neutrality: What's competition anyway?

2006-06-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, in reviewing what I could about the net neutrality debate, I've surmised a few things. One of the most important things being that not enough people are talking about competition.

First off, all the free market thinkers should exit the stage right now. We're not talking about a free market either way, be it by regulating the internet via legislation, or by leaving the few and powerful telcos with their their lines that the government helped them to pay for in the first place.
If a free market existed, there would be infinite (or at least a good number of) competitors to the Charter @ Home cable internet service I use at home. As it stands, they are the only option. So naturally there's no incentive to have consistant service, no real customer service to speak of, and plans available trail behind offers where there exist at least two cable internet providers in the same area.

And thus lies a problem I see with the debate. Either people claim there competition exists complete with the full benefits thereof, or they claim that it practically doesn't exist at all and presume a monopoly scenario. I hate when two sides of a debate just yell their talking points at each other, so I want to analyze this particular conflict of assumptions by asking...

How much competition is enough?

A shift in Focus

2006-06-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

Ok... so it's been many days, and I've decided to shift the focus of the blog.

Well... I supppose I should be more specific. I'm removing focus from this blog. I'm finding that at present, my environment doens't let me focus on a single topic like net neutrality every day.

So I suppose the direction of this blog is now open to my whim. I'll be posting about things that interest me, but nothing too specific until summer school is over and I can figure out better what it is I want to zero in on.

Tired

2006-05-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

I just spent ten plus hours in transit from SC to HI. I looked over a bunch of articles and commented on them on the plane ride. I'll post them tomorrow, because I'm about to collapse.

Net Neutrality: The Players

2006-05-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, as far as I can tell there are three players involved when it comes to net neutrality.

The government
Currently being pressured to both make and resist from making rules.
Companies
In particular I'm talking about companies and coalitions of companies with deep enough pockets to turn the heads of a number of congressmen. Under this heading are the most vocal agents both for and against net neutrality. Within this category I'm going to define two subcategories.
- Internet Providing Companies
  These are the guys you pay to use the internet at all. Thus included are the network companies like BellSouth and Verizon as well as others.
- Internet Utilizing Companies
  These are companies whose business is built on using the internet. The heavyweights include Google and Yahoo. But due to the permeating nature of the internet, this category expands outward to online financial services, Frappr, YouTube, or MySpace.
Consumers
Powerless to have a real voice in the matter, consumers are a vital part of the equation nonetheless in both their number, and the fact that their patronage controls the other two sections

Ok. The next post should either involve dipping into each group's motivation, or I may decide to go ahead and jump into some of the comments and stories one can find online... probably the latter.

Big Issue Number One: Net Neutrality

2006-05-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

The first topic I want to take a closer look at is something I believe to be monstrously important that I'm sure many (but not enough of you) have heard about... net neutrality. From what I can tell, I'm entering the debate a little later than many, but I'll do my best to catch up over the coming posts. If any readers don't know anything at all about the issue, you can catch the anti-neutrality talking points via a cutesy cartoon (which will be explicated later) or their linked website, handsoff.org. The other half of the talking point shouting match can be found at savetheinternet.org. These websites are both heavily biased, so just beware that neither of them is being completely honest or reasonable as they lay our their sides of the story.

The birth of a blog

2006-05-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Alright. So it's time to try my hand at the blogging business. For those interested, I am going to attempt to comment somewhat intelligently on the technological issues of greatest importance today. As the name implies, I'll be looking beyond the technical implications of various technologies and blogging my thoughts on their greater meanings and implications. As this is my first blog, it's prone to reassembly and total revamping at any time, but my focus on my topic won't waver. So... enjoy.