The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Wednesday, Debtember 14, 2005

Immiment Death of the Internet: mpeg @ 127.0.0.1

The [phone/TV cable] carriers are going to lobby for the laws and regulations they need, and they're going to do the deals they need to do. The new system will be theirs, not ours. The NEA principle—Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, Anybody can improve it— so familiar to the Free Software and Open Source communities will prove to be a temporary ideal, a geek conceit. Code is not Law. Culture is not Free. From the Big Boys' perspective, code and culture are stuff nobody cares about.

That's us: Nobody.

The new carrier-based Net will work in the same asymmetrical few-to- many, top-down pyramidal way made familiar by TV, radio, newspapers, books, magazines and other Industrial Age media now being sucked into Information Age pipes. Movement still will go from producers to consumers, just like it always did. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Literally.

Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes

Network Neutrality, that is, a network that just delivers the packets, stupid, with no cognizance of what app, device, or end-user generated them, is an public good that gives rise to much innovation, value creation and economic growth at the application layer. It is the single greatest factor in the success of the current Internet.

But a Network Neutrality rule, even a strong one, can fail.

http://isen.com/blog/2005/12/what-network-neutrality-rule- wants.html

If you want to help save the net, bug your provider for IPv6 today.

If you want to ensure the Net remains a free place for ideas and services - you - yes you, dear reader, must also take action. Implement IPv6 at home, and at work. Get a ipv6 tunnel and publish your AAAA records! Don't ask for permission. Just. Do. It.

One escape from the silo - ipv6

Each article is a definite must-read if you value the future of the Internet. I know that David Isenberg has been saying this for a long time on isen.blog, but it seems to be coming to a head, what with the entrenched phone and cable companies wanting to carve out the Internet in their own (incompatible) images.

And IPv6 would prevent a lot of networking problems and return us once again to a true “point-to-point” nature of the early (pre- commercial) Internet.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.