FCC Loses Ruling on Net Neutrality

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all internet traffic that flows over their servers. The FCC’s job is to regulate telecommunications, and in the law suit, Comcast Corp. challenged the FCC’s right to regulate Network Neutrality obligations on all the different broadband providers.

The unanimous decision by the court will have large implications on the FCC’s ability to regulate broadband providers and will undermine what they will and will not be able to demand of these providers. The suit will also have huge implications on the National Broadband plan that the FCC had been planning; the FCC was planning on spreading broadband throughout the nation by tapping into federal funds, but this case may undermine such efforts.

The FCC argues that braodband providers are currently able to discriminate against certain websites and services but that complete Net Neutrality as proposed by the FCC would create a fair and legal ground for all web based services. However, I strongly believe that the government departments, such as the FCC, have no right to step into the private affairs of businesses such as Comcast and demand that they reform their practices. Therefore, I agree with the ruling of the court for upholding the democratic values of this nation and not allowing the government to expand beyond its boundaries, regardless of any negative implications it may have.

(The Man Climbing the Post is the FCC)

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing refers to a term in computer science that is used to describe the advances in client-server technology that has occured in the last decade. The technology is divided into three catergories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The name ‘Cloud Computing’ was used to describe this because the cloud symbol is often used to represent the internet in flow charts and diagrams.

The concept of cloud computing was engineered in the 1960′s when John McCarthy stated that computation may become public. In 1999, Loudcloud became the first company to attempt to commercialize cloud computing with an infrastructure as a service model. The company Amazon would prove to be vital in the emergence of cloud computing because they were the first large company to modernize their system and make it far more efficient by converting to cloud computing. The Cloud Computing that Amazon utilized was SaaS, which can be used for anything from email, to inventory control and database processing.

Cloud Computing is not without its problems though. One expert in the field, Richard Stallman, claims that Cloud Computing “will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time”.  Whatever the issues with Cloud Computing, it is clear that it provides a great advancement in internet technology and is a means for providing much more efficient and safe servers for the public and private use.

First Internet Message, EVER!

On October 29, 1969 the first messages was sent via ARPNET, the network that would later become the Internet. The message traveled over 400 miles from a UCLA lab to a lab at Stanford. The project was managed by Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at UCLA, and although he managed to send the first message ever, it was not a completely successful attempt. The message that was sent was supposed to be ‘login’ but only the first to letters were sent ‘L-O’ before the whole system crashed. Nevertheless, complete message or not, the first message sent over the internet was a monumental feat.

This simple message began a phenomenon that would change the direction that our world was headed in. The internet has enabled the spread of information and ideas to millions of more people than previously were effected without the internet. The internet has also enabled people to stay better connected by means of social net-working sites and email and other messaging services. The internet has truly revolutionized the world we live in, and it would be very hard to imagine what the world would be like without the internet.

Random Facts: How many hours a day does the average person the use the internet? Way too much (average is 13+hrs a week, teens spend 33 hours on average…). Finland recently has made it a legal right that all of it’s 5.2 million citizens have the right to access the internet!

National Geographic Article on First Internet Message

This Is Why We Hate Communism… (Google V. China)

    Recently it has come to Google’s attention that China has been launching cyber-attack on it’s google.cn (Google China).  In attempts to read the emails of activists for Chinese human rights, it appears that the Chinese government has hacked into various gmail accounts. Reprecussions are sure to follow by Google, as they should, and may be as severe as a complete withdrawal of Google from China.

   Google has decided to stop censoring results that turn up on its search engines in China. This move will certainly infuriate Chinese government who have worked hard to censor anything, and everything that they do not want their population to view.  If Google decides to pull out of operation in China, they may influence many other websites and companies in China to do the same.

   I personally believe that Google should pull out of China. The infractions of the Chinese government should not be tolerated and forcing censorship over results is completely ridiculous. By giving in to the Chinese censor demands, Google is giving in to authoritarian Chinese control and is ultimately forgetting American morals. It is Google’s responsibility as an American company to not condone such illegal activity and pull out of China. If Google can do this, they may encourage other companies to do so. If this happens, it will certainly effect both China’s economy and their foreign relations. If China is then put in the spotlight, they may be forced to reconsider some of their authoritarian practices.

Google’s Blog Regarding the Issue

Economist Article on the Issue 

 

 

 

 

Abstract A!

Many scholars from the likes of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are in a consensus that this is perhaps one of the best abstract art pieces from the modern era of art. Nominated for awards in both the Tate Modern Art Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it seems fairly clear that Alex Booher deserves an A+ on this assignment.

Character^2

This project was fun! It was cool to flip letters around, and play with different letter fonts and sizes to create Character-Characters! Thus they can be called Character^2.

#9: Typography

The Typography assignment was awesome! I didn’t know that the letters such as h are called ascenders and letters such as g are called descenders.  Good Times in Web Design!!

#8: Facebook and Privacy

When the new privacy policy came about  on Facebook recently, I at first paid very little attention and simply pressed ‘accept’. Soon someone told me that anyone could see my profile so I went back to the privacy settings and reset them so that the only people who could view my profile was my friends.

The fact that facebook’s default privacy settings are so open-ended seems incredibly unfair. Many people, like myself, simply press ‘accept’ so that they can continue on to do whatever else they wanted to do on facebook. Little did they know, they were opening there profile up to nearly anyone who wished to see it. Many people originally turned to Facebook from MySpace because it seemed to be a much more secure and safe social networking site. By creating such a privacy policy, Facebook may be turning away many people who chose to use the site because of it’s concern for privacy.

Facebook’s default settings should install the most privacy on a profile not the least. With over 100 million users in the U.S. alone, they are screwing over a huge amount of consumers. I think it is completely justified for companies concerned about privacy to file complaints, possibly even lawsuits, over facebook’s complete lack of concern for it’s users and their privacy.

Facebook Privacy Policy

Facebook Privacy Article

Semantic Web

Semantic Web is said to have been inspired by the same creator of the World Wide Web, John Berners-Lee. He had the inspiration to turn the web into a single repository for information instead of an enormous collection of web sites and pages.

The Semantic Web is primarily focused upon machines while Web 2.0 is primarily focused upon people and social networking and collaboration. The Semantic Web is a project aimed to compile and present data in a manner that is understood by computers. The project aims to do this in such a way that the computers can then compile and aggregate information without the need for a human operator.

The Semantic Web is not a seperate entity from the World Wide Web, it is simply a component of it. It adds new data, extending previous documents into further data. To achieve the means of the semantic web, developers have created RDF (Resource Description Framework) which is a framework that is used to turn web data into structured data that can be used by software.

Semantic Web is most commonly used in research and life sciences where it is utilized to easily compile lists of medicines and illnesses that would otherwise be quite difficult to aggregate.

(The most recent version of Semantic Web is often refered to as Web 3.0)

Copyright

1.) The framers included copyright in the constitution because if there were no copyright laws, publishers would simply copy works and sell them at a low price, paying no royalties to the real author. This policy would also balance the interests of the authors, publishers and readers.

2.) Thomas Jefferson was a advocate for the protection of private property. Jefferson influenced early copyright philosophy because he doubted copyright and thought it would create powerful and artificial monopolies. He believed that the state-granted power to strengthen their control over the flow of ideas and expressions would give certain monopolies unreasonable control. While he certainly was skeptical, he did acknowledge that a limited copyright could encourage creativity.

3.) Ideally, a copyright between the creators/copyright holders and the user/public is a give-and-take where the author is rewarded for their work but the is able to be disseminated into society so that the public can use it for academic and educational purposes. While it should offer strong democratic safeguards, it has now become out of balance. Now it has become a “matrix of legal protections called intellectual property.”

Thomas Jefferson and Napster

Digital History

Copyright Term