If anyone wasn’t convinced of the need for net neutrality legislation, a story by Declan McCullagh should dispel any objections they might have. It seems that Comcast has been interfering with Bit-Torrent traffic of its subscribers. What’s more it knew that to do so was wrong, and therefore denied it when asked about it.
The standard reposte from the anti-net neutrality camp is that we shouldn’t regulate when the markets will take care of situations such as this. If we had a vibrant market, full of competitors, that probably would be true. But we don’t–the market for high speed internet is a monopoly or a duopoly in many markets, so normal competitive mechanism will not function. For example, a recent article in St. Louis Post Dispatch indicated that, excluding satellite internet access, the best areas in St. Louis had two providers (AT&T and Charter), many had only one (Charter), and quite a few had no high speed access. I think it’s fair to exclude the satellite service because it’s a very different technology, and the price doesn’t make it really compete with AT&T and Comcast.
So if you care about being able to distribute Linux via Bit-torrent, or to distribute information that wouldn’t otherwise have an outlet, press your legislator to enact net neutrality legislation…
Comcast really does block BitTorrent traffic after all
For a few months Comcast has been the subject of scattered reports that say it throttles BitTorrent traffic.
TorrentFreak said in August that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with file transfers by posing as one party and then, essentially, hanging up the phone. But when we contacted Comcast at the time, it flatly denied doing it.
Thanks to tests reported Friday by the Associated Press, however, it’s clear that Comcast is actively interfering with peer-to-peer networks even if relatively small files are being transferred.
The tests involved transferring a copy of the King James Bible through the BitTorrent network on Time Warner Cable, Cablevison, AT&T and two Comcast connections (in Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco). Only the Comcast-connected computers were affected.
This is significant. The Gutenberg version of the King James Bible is only 4.24MB, which is relatively tiny and indicates that Comcast was singling out even small files.
Here’s some of links to articles about the growth of MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Quite a lot of interest in this given the recent paper by Dr. Monina Klevens et al at the CDC which concluded:
“Based on 8,987 observed cases of MRSA and 1,598 in-hospital deaths among patients with MRSA, we estimate that 94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases..”
And remember, this was in 2005–today the number is probably much higher.
Not any coverage of one of the most important causes of this phenomena, though. Antibiotic bacteria have arisen so quickly largely because of the widespread use of antibiotics for veterinary uses, chiefly in the giant food factory farms. In these farms, animals are crowded together in disease-promoting conditions, so the only way to keep the animals from getting sick is to constantly feed them antibiotics. The bacteria that these animals are exposed to then become resistant to antibiotics, and through the process of horizontal genetic transfer, the germs that infect humans get the genes that they need to protect them against antibiotics. (See my previous post on this issue)
So, the AMA warned before against the use of the newer generation of antibiotics in animals, and is, along with 12 other health organizations, warning about this again, now that the pharmaceutical industry has asked the government for permission to use the very newest class of antibiotics on animals. These are our last-ditch antibiotics, and if bacteria become resistant to these, the number of fatal infections will increase, warns the AMA.
So the government is going to look out for the interests of its citizens and NOT approve the request by the pharma industry to make these last ditch antibiotics available to the cattle industry, right? Think again:
Coverage by the Boston Globe of an ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) cluster in Southeastern MA. Not regular news coverage, but this is an OP-Ed, about Public Health (!):
FOR MORE than 20 years, health officials have known about a puzzling concentration of the neurodegenerative illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Middleborough. In the coming months, a study financed by the federal government and conducted by state environmental health scientists might answer the riddle of whether toxic waste from two Superfund sites in the town has caused the rare and usually fatal disease, which normally strikes just two of 100,000 people.
It would have been nice had the author seen fit to disclose the rate in the Middleborough area, and talk a bit about the odds of that cluster being a random occurrence. Let’s give the public some numbers, not everyone is innumerate.
But here’s where this OP ed really falls down, IMHO:
Over at Information Week, Paul McDougall has a piece that lays out some (but curiously not all) of the facts concerning the close ties between Acacia Research, who is now suing Red Hat and Novell, and Microsoft. He starts quite directly:
Less than two weeks after it hired a senior intellectual-property executive from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), a California-based firm has filed a patent-infringement suit against Red Hat and Novell (NSDQ: NOVL), distributors of open-source software that Microsoft has long claimed violates its patents.
and further reminds us that Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, just last week said:
“I expect they would like to go to the open source world as well,” Ballmer said while speaking at a Microsoft event in the U.K. Microsoft claims Linux and other open source programs violate more than 200 of its patents.
Well my post from a couple of days ago should have had a couple more links to free music downloads, in particular this one, as BGG noted:
Big Acts Follow Radiohead’s Lead: Let Their Music Go Free
Rock group Radiohead has started a trend. Nine Inch Nails announced it will release its upcoming album online and ask fans to pay what they want for it – instead of charging a set fee. Other major recording artists Oasis and Jamiroquai are also considering following Radiohead’s lead.
These bands are stealing a page from Radiohead’s playbook. Last week Radioahead announced it would be releasing its new album online, bypassing its label, and ask fans to set a price they wanted to pay. As of this morning Radiohead’s album In Rainbows is available for download via the band’s Website.
Now, I just can’t wait to hear what the IP maximalists like Chris Castle and the IPCentral gang have to say about this.
IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state.
Of course, PJ posts the links to the Patent involved, which has been used as an example of misuse of the Patent system by others already:
You might recall the patent was used in litigation against Apple in April 2007, and Beta News reported at the time that it’s a 1991 Xerox PARC patent. But ars technica provided the detail that it references earlier patents going back to 1984. Appropriately enough. If you use Google to search for “IP Innovation LLC 5,072,412″ you’ll find more. Note that it’s IP Innovation, not plural. There is another company using IP Innovations. I gather Apple paid them to go away in June.
This patent has been pointed to as an example of the need for patent reform. Now, Patent Troll Tracker claims that IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of Acacia. More here. Law.com did a story on Acacia in February, “Extreme Makeover: From Patent Troll to the Belle of the Ball.”
The next interesting item to note is Acacia’s ties to Microsoft (duh!)
Hat Tip: TLF
An interesting web application that the New York Times put on their website allowing you to search the transcript of the Presidential debates for any particular word. You can roll your cursor over the highlighted portions of the text, and you will see that snippet of text, which you can click on to go to that section, and see that portion of the debate.
While researching the previous article, I had come across this pronouncement from the Vatican, which was a long time coming, but is very important because of the numbers that can be mobilized and the wide audience that will now be more receptive to environmental issues:
Climate change int’l concern, a moral imperative to protect environment, Vatican states
UNITED NATIONS (Catholic Online) – Climate change is a serious concern for the international community and an inescapable responsibility for scientists, political and governmental leaders and all other sectors of human society, a high-ranking Vatican official told the member countries of the United Nations.
In a Sept. 24 statement to the U.N. General Assembly session on climate change entitled “The future is in our hands: Addressing the leadership challenge of climate change,” Msgr. Piero Parolin, Vatican undersecretary for relations with states, stressed that, despite various interpretations, the “best scientific assessments” have established a clear link between human activity and global warming, which requires the adoption of a “coordinated, effective and prompt international political strategy.”
Apparently, in a rather weird twist of events, a group of ultra-conservative Catholics and an organization known as the “American Family Association” (AFA) are both upset because one of the largest leather events, the Folsom Street Fair, isn’t getting enough publicity. So, like the good conservatives they are, they go and spread the news of the Folsom Street Fair, so it will get as much publicity as possible. They even post pictures of the event on their website (“for verification purposes only” of course!) You can’t make this stuff up!
Just to prove that I am not, in fact, hallucinating here is the screen shot of the email letter from the American Family Association which contains links to those awful, filthy, perverted, twisted, disgusting, degenerate photos. Reminds me a little of Sir Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I will face the peril…there’s only about 150 of them…”
WARNING LINKS TO PORNOGRAPHIC WEBSITES RUN BY CONSERVATIVE PRO-FAMILY GROUPS BELOW
The minimal Katrina cottages are appealing to many that weren’t the target demographic at all. Many are discovering that they don’t want a McMansion, or anything even close to it, and are very happy to have something that is small, well designed and not too expensive to heat, and capable of fitting on a small site, too.
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