Uncategorized

Mr. Robot offers a field guide to the phonies of the geek world

4 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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A Holden Caufield for the 21st century.

Dork.

Hollywood’s latest excursion into geekdom is Mr. Robot, a new series on the USA Network. I only saw the first episode, but the memes and tropes presented have a certain ring of truth. One of the funniest was the observation that the fastest way to identify a techno-wanker is by the Blackberry he displays…

There he is, Terry Colby, the CTO. Even though he’s the head technology guy at one of the biggest companies in the world, he owns a Blackberry.

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Home automation company faces the and now what hurdle

14 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Not much new.

Ring – the company formally known as DoorBot – is still keeping it simple and growing slowly. It produces a camera with a motion sensor that attaches to your front door and lets you see who’s there – whether you’re at home or justing looking in from somewhere out on the interwebs via Ring’s Android or iOS app, or a browser. For a fee – $3 per month or $30 for an entire year – it’ll also store six months worth of high definition video.… More

How not to run a telecoms company

7 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hey, maybe no one will notice that it broke?

It was no black swan event that brought down a big chunk of Hurricane Electric’s data center #2 in Fremont last weekend. Instead, it was an easily foreseeable malfunction that should have been taken into account when the center was designed. According to a postmortem report posted by Linode – the company primarily affected by the outage – when PG&E’s line went out at the facility, a bad battery kept backup power from kicking in…

Seven of the facility’s eight generators started correctly and provided uninterrupted power.

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A closer look at FCC's boundaries for state broadband regulators

31 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Out of bounds.

The FCC’s decision to bring broadband infrastructure and service under common carrier rules sets limits on both the ability of states to impose regulations under those rules, and on federal preemption of existing state authority.

As far as the latter is concerned, in paragraph 531 the decision specifically references the ability of states to choose to regulate pole attachment rules (section 224 of the common carrier law), manage universal service requirements and eligibility (section 214) – although not impose taxes (see paragraph 432 of the decision), manage the public right of way (section 253) and grandfather in rules (section 261).… More

You pays yer money, you takes yer chances

30 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hurricane Electric should have been prepared for this.

I’ve been reading, negotiating and occasionally writing service level agreements (SLAs) for many years. It’s an abstract exercise – so many nines for so much money. That’s until until something happens and you have to figure out whether 1. you stupidly hand waved the whole thing hoping that nothing would happen, 2. the calculated risk you took was worth it, or 3. you got screwed by your service provider.… More

The Internet might not be a freeport much longer

24 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Internet access service is largely exempt from taxes in the U.S., thanks to a bill passed back in 1998, and given a last minute, one year extension last year. That extension will expire in October, unless federal lawmakers agree on either another extension – for however long – or a permanent bill.

On the one hand, it’s pretty simple: we’ve built a revolutionary and explosively valuable economy over the past 17 years without directly taxing the service that’s made it possible.… More

Rosenworcel gets a second term on the FCC

22 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Jessica Rosenworcel is heading toward five more years as a member of the Federal Communications Commission. U.S. president Barack Obama “announced his intent to nominate” her to a full term on the commission. Once he actually does that, the next step will be confirmation by the U.S. senate.

It’s a good move. Rosenworcel has a history of independent thinking, and voting, as an FCC commissioner. She provided the intellectual push back against chairman Tom Wheeler’s original no lobbyist left behind plan for ensuring network neutrality, and tried to include consideration of common carrier Internet regulation and other alternatives from the beginning.… More

Dial up is also back up

16 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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They didn’t get the memo about the logo either.

AOL is bringing 2.2 million dial up Internet access subscribers to the Verizon dance. That legacy business generates more than half a billion dollars a year for the former king of online access, according to its fourth quarter 2014 earnings release.

The persistence of the dial up market has been largely attributed to two factors over the past few days: lack of broadband access in rural areas and the appeal of a low, $20 per month price to low income households.… More

Internet companies' seminal argument against common carrier rules slams glow in the dark prophylactic

15 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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The telecoms companies and associated lobbyists that are challenging the Federal Communication Commission’s common carrier rules for the Internet did the completely expected and asked an appeals court to put the new regulations on hold. The move followed the FCC’s completely expected denial of a similar request.

The arguments are pretty much the same. Again, the companies and lobbyists are pulling a public relations stunt by saying hey, it’s okay if the stuff about no blocking goes into effect because we’re such high minded corporate citizens that we’re doing it anyway.… More

Patent troll fight moves to, but not through the senate


John Oliver explains patent trolls and the U.S. senate.

The U.S. senate started working on its own version of an anti-patent troll bill with great optimism last week but, like a similar effort in the house of representatives, it’s bogging down in the Washington legislative swamp.

The objective is to keep shell companies from buying up patents and engaging the services of the predatory bar to launch bogus lawsuits and collection efforts against thousands of small companies, in the hopes that maybe hundreds of them will just write a check to make them go away.… More