December 2010
7 posts
On Net Neutrality
I think the FCC’s plan is potentially a win, if it actually does what they say it will. Phone and cable companies won’t be able to muck with the bits, and wireless providers will be able to prioritize service when necessary.
Think of it this way: if you can’t watch video in real time on AT&T, then switch providers to a carrier with a more video-friendly network. Or use...
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A Possible Future for ChromeOS in the Cloud
The recent Wikileaks fiasco (among other developments) has me thinking about political control of the internet. How do you route around national firewalls and knee-jerk corruption of the DNS? Or institutional firewalls? Or even just untrusted networks, like the compromised wi-fi at the local coffee shop?
One obvious solution is to use a VPN with an endpoint in a country which not only loves...
Internet Security is an Oxymoron
What have we been reminded of in the past three weeks?
Governments are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to lie and spy on friends and enemies alike. The diplomatic cable releases from Wikileaks are the tip of the iceberg, in that they are not the biggest secrets, just the low-level ones available to millions of rank-and-file government employees.
The CEO uses the same password for...
NYC Ballot Recount Finds 195,000 Votes (17%!)...
Once the polls close, each of the digital scanners used at the city’s polling sites spews out a supermarketlike receipt. Election workers cut the paper strips and sort them by election district, since a polling place may serve more than one district. They then use a calculator to tally the results for each candidate, and the count is transcribed by hand onto “return of canvass” forms. They...