Over the past 20 years, we denizens of this small, backwater planet in the the far corner of the Milky Way have found in the Internet humanity’s greatest and most precious respite: solace in freely available, universally distributed and globally consumed knowledge – in realtime. It took 600o years (tongue-in-cheek), but that bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been the most successful viral campaign every conceived.
It has allowed mankind to reach further, think longer, and to consider that which was not possible before its inception. The Internet has helped to bring everyone closer, to save lives and to give voice where none could be/was allowed to be heard before. Every aspect of our existence has been influenced by the paradigm changer that is the Internet.
So it is sad to read that China has chosen to use the Internet to continue conducting human rights abuses by censoring and silencing those who, without the Internet, would otherwise not exist to us in any other way. We would not know their plight, their situation, or their story. We would not know the truth.
China is working feverishly to “re-configure the Matrix” because one of their own citizens, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent protest in support of that which the Internet embodies. Liu sits in a Chinese prison cell because he believes in the freedom of choice, the freedom of democracy and the freedom of speech. His crime? He publicly stated that his government should allow the Chinese people to vote.
What’s your opinion? How has the Internet changed your life? To find out more about Liu’s situation or to read more about this latest abuse of power by the Chinese government, click here…http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101008/16184311344
Throttling, Caps and Bandwidth….Oh My!
Someone emailed me an article today (http://m.computerworld.com/s/article/9225002/New_iPad_could_cause_corporate_network_crunch?mm_ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dnew%2BiPad%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari ) concerning a problem that mobile devices could cause on corporate networks as the devices increase in use throughout those environments. This is a pretty important topic so I decided to write about it here.
The article sites an average company’s use of a 1.544 Mbps T-1 connection that could easily become saturated by media intensive and bandwidth hungry iPad apps. That conversation started a few years ago with smart phones, 1st gen iPads, etc.. The headline of the article should say “make corporate network crunch worse”. It’s been this way for years, it is getting worse because of the number of devices coming online recently, BUT, know the truth. Companies who still use outdated and dreadfully slow T-1′s are already “network crunched” and should be, if they haven’t already, upgrading to metro-e, or other faster broadband technologies to begin with. Plus the standard corporate LAN operates at 10/100 on older equipment not meant for multimedia QOS, newer routing methods and switching technologies. IT knows this, and wants faster and better technologies, and this is how they get them.
It is a perceived, for all but those in industry, problem that only exists in the minds of the executives who want to squeeze every bit of usability out of their networks instead of providing a comfortable, pleasant and productive one to customers who pay a hell of a lot to keep it going. Industry is trying its best to convince consumers that bandwidth caps, throttling, usage tiers, etc. are necessary They are, to the providers, because it allows them to make more money.