Russia Passes Internet Censorship Legislation Impacting LiveJournal Blog
August 26, 2012
Internet censorship is a hot topic these days due to the fact that some countries do not value freedom of speech and choose to restrict it. ZeroPaid recently reported on this issue in the article “Russia Censors LiveJournal.”
According to the article, Russia has passed internet censorship legislation in the name of protecting its citizens from suicide, drug use, and other criminal activity. The impetus for censoring LiveJournal, a social network owned by SUP Media where Internet users can keep a blog, occurred on July 18 when:
“Local law enforcement informed a Yaroslavl court about pat-index, a neo-Nazi blog it had found on LiveJournal during a sweep. The blog’s hateful message violates Russian federal laws against extremism. Because of Bill 89417-6, the court now has the power to stamp it out completely and immediately. The court ordered Internet provider Netis Telekom to block, among other illegal sites, this blog’s IP. The court order shows the IP to be blocked as 208.93.0.128.
However, LiveJournal blogs don’t have unique IP addresses. That IP belongs to all of LiveJournal Russia, effectively blacking out LiveJournal for everyone in Yaroslavl (a city of nearly 600,000) and all the surrounding areas to which Netis Telekom provides service.”
Despite the fact that the censorship only occurred for a short period of time, the fact that legislation restricting Internet rights, which have been deemed part of freedom of speech by the United Nations, exists is very problematic.
Jasmine Ashton, August 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Flaw in Cloud Search: No Connectivity, No Access
August 21, 2012
Sitting in Fairbanks, Alaska, I realized that the cloud does not work. I had my trusty laptop, an iPad, and my smartphone. The only device which allowed me to work was the laptop with its local storage. The wireless connections were unusable due to insufficient network capacity and latency. The iPad was a glorified book reader. The mobile phone simply did not work. My T Mobile hot spot said it was device 330336 and refused to do anything except run down its battery.
Unusual situation? For me, no. For the poobahs, mavens, and self-appointed wizards formerly known as “real” journalists? Yes. Impossible.
Let me assure you that the world contains many places which render mobile devices mostly useless. However, when I read such articles as “Will Google Fiber Waste $28 Billion”, I perceive a disconnect. Google is investing in a high speed demonstration network in Kansas City, a metropolis with what I consider adequate connectivity. WiFi works from Boingo.com hot spots. My mobile phone allows voice and data access. My iPad displays Pulse headlines.
A happy quack to http://athenspio.posterous.com/athens-co-is-under-a-severe-thunderstorm-warn
The New York centric Forbes’ article asserts:
At a societal level, Cioffi [an expert in telco matters] argues that the benefit of Google Fiber would be way below its costs. After all, if a billion phone lines were replaced by fiber, the cost would be $3 trillion. But DSL and shared WiFi — currently in use by 400 million subscribers according to research firm Point Topic — could boost the speed by a factor of two or three — to between 200 megabits/second (Mbps) and 400 Mbps. If Cioffi is right, it does not look likely that Google Fiber will reach the critical mass needed to get the additional advertising revenues from faster Internet access it would need to come close to justifying its enormous investment.
If Google cannot deploy high speed connections in Kansas City, who will be able to foot the bill for providing basic high speed connectivity in smaller communities.
So what?
First, with the shift to the promise of the cloud, individuals may find themselves like me without access to basic communications for considerable periods of time. The fact that those in New York City or Los Angeles have the resources and connectivity does not help those in underserved areas. Perhaps this is not a big deal because the real money comes from customers in densely populated areas. For those outside those areas, tough luck.
Second, as people become less dependent on local storage both magnetic and paper, access to information decreases. The yap about information overload is a problem for those with access and the money to pay for bandwidth. For those just relying on cloud services, a certain segment of the population may be information starved.
Third, the models for pricing such as the analysis summarized in the Forbes’ article don’t work where there are too few people or geographic locations which cannot be economically served with today’s technology. Forget the next generation technology, more primitive methods are not part of the equipment for living.
Little surprise, then, that there is investor panic setting in with regard to online services such as Facebook, Groupon, and even Google. When the models don’t work in densely populated areas, it does not take much thinking to realize that the shift to the cloud will deliver big bucks from the hinterlands.
I can’t search if I can’t connect. What’s this mean for cloud search? A potential hurdle?
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Wall Street Journal Fails to Correct Major Misstep
August 20, 2012
A big flub at Wall Street Journal was made when L. Gordon Crovitz made some extravagantly false claims about the origins of the Internet.
The incredibly wrong opinion piece by the former publisher was not the part of this story that is impressive. The fascinating part is that WSJ is not making any corrections, instead choosing to simply state, “A version of this article appeared July 23, 2012, on page A11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Who Really Invented the Internet?” We learn more about the mishap in the TechDirt article, “WSJ Still Hasn’t Corrected Its Bogus internet Revisionist Story, As Vint Cerf & Xerox Both Claim the Story is Wrong.” The article states:
“That was a pretty minor correction, involving Crovitz being confused about how to understand how blockquotes work in HTML. But what about all of the other factual errors, including whoppers like saying that Tim Berners-Lee invented hyperlinks? Of course, considering the very premise of the article and nearly all of its supporting factoids were in error, it raises questions about how you do such a correction, other than crossing out the whole thing and posting a note admitting to the error (none of which has yet been done).”
We here at the goose pond love seeing real journalists in action. Considering how public the discussion about these errors has gotten, we are surprised that the WSJ is not doing more to remedy the situation. Which begs the question: why aren’t they?
Andrea Hayden, August 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Pivot: Business Gold or Baloney
August 15, 2012
Let’s think about the belief that services will cure revenue problems. Straight away, services can be lucrative. Check out the revenues from McKinsey, BCG, or Bainie Mr. Romney.
The question is, “Can a company anchored in services become a hardware company?” And the flip side, “Can a hardware company become a services company?” These questions highlight the latest in business baloney: The pivot. The idea is that a company can go in a different direction, pay its debts, maintain its existing revenues, and generate large flows of new revenues. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a children’s book metaphor for this strategic vision.
Google is doing the pivot. First, there was the purchase price of $12 billion and change. Then there was the $200 million plus operating loss mentioned in the most recent Google quarterly report. Today (August 13, 2012) I read “Google to Cut 4,000 Motorola Mobility Jobs, Take $275 Million Charge.” The core of the news story is like the refrain of a sad Sinatra tune:
Motorola Mobility has lost money in fourteen of the last sixteen quarters and in its latest quarter reported an operating loss of $233 million on revenue of $1.25 billion. “These changes are designed to return Motorola’s mobile devices unit to profitability,” Google said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Google has “grand plans.” The task is to keep the ad revenues pumped up as the company invests in new revenue opportunities such as Motorola hardware, legal experts to deal with the copious supply of litigation, and tactical moves which seem to target Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other companies with possible monopolistic business models.
Will firing people and the possible sale of deadwood make the pivot work?
Given enough money and time, my view is that Google may succeed. The race
is on for Google. The three reasons I have identified include:
The click pattern difference between desktop Google searching and mobile device Google searching. To sum up what I understand is the “new wisdom”, mobile clicks are growing but deliver less bang for the advertisers’ buck. Desktop searches are not growing as they once did. Advertisers get less bang for their buck. My simple conclusion is that Google will have to find ways to work around these revenue producing online behaviors. But isn’t down down?
Second, like Amazon, Google has a cost control problem. Google is making cuts in services, buying companies to get a jump start or head start in certain application spaces, and investing in gee whiz technology in hopes of getting operational costs to flatten. My view? Good luck with that. Companies like Amazon and Google need increased revenue to keep pace with technology costs. In my experience, technology costs just keep on going up no matter what a manager does to contain them. The solution is to cap the budget and fall behind or keep spending until the business model collapses. (Example: Convera.)
Third, the bets on the future are predicated on the fact that the Internet is nothing more than a communications and information utility. The ubiquity opens the door to a cuteness and convenience thermonuclear war. Witness the efforts of Facebook and Google to co-opt the other company’s territory. The problem is that when cuteness and convenience become important, the tech companies may find themselves at the mercy of the experts in these disciplines. Google is making nice with the entertainment industry. Facebook cooperates with US government agencies. The problem for Facebook and Google is that the specialists in cuteness and convenience have more monetization options that the technology companies. One buys a mobile phone or runs a Web search. A child nags to go to the new Disney movie, get the coloring book, and have the Mickey Mouse T shirt. Facebook and Google give these cute items away. Disney and other experts in cuteness and convenience sell them, year in, year out, generation after generation.
Read more
Some Countries Still Prefer to Read the Newspaper
August 13, 2012
Science Daily recently posted the article “Online News Takes Off in US and UK While Most Germans Prefer a Newspaper” shines a bright light on traditional publishers. Unfortunately for American journalists, Germany seems to be the only country left that prefers print news.
According to the article, a recent study published by the University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, based on surveys in UK, US, France, Germany and Denmark, found that While the majority of Germans prefer print news over online, US and UK residents prefer to access their news online. More specifically. 28% of UK and US residents access the news from their mobile phones and 60% of tablet users in the UK regularly access online news.
Report author Nic Newman, a Research Associate at Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, said:
“For many people digital news is now the first place to go for the latest news, rivaling television as the most frequently accessed type of news in the UK and the US. Of those surveyed, nearly eight out of ten people accessed online news every week, but the transition from print to digital is much slower in other European countries. The report suggests that the Germans were the least likely to access news online of the five countries studied with almost seven out of ten, of those surveyed, saying they still read a newspaper.”
As online news continues to thrive in some western countries, it is interesting to see that others remain attached to traditional media forms.
Jasmine Ashton, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Ami Revamps Web Site
August 11, 2012
Ami, the enterprise intelligence software company, has refreshed its Web site. If you navigate to the UK version of the company’s site here, you can learn about the firm’s current positioning. (Be warned, though: there is an auto-run video explaining the firm’s approach.) There is also an “old” Web site which is still online at this link.
The new site is more slick and sleek than the old. The color combinations are less jarring, and there is much less clutter on the page. The auto-run video, though, could be a problem. A software company should be aware that, yes, even now, not everyone’s system can handle such an imposition.
The company’s mission as described on the new site reads:
“Our mission is to enable our customers to develop the most far reaching insight and intelligence about the markets and sectors in which they operate through the optimised acquisition, analysis and presentation of information from both internal and external sources. . . .
“AMI Enterprise Intelligence specialises in the development of information and content processing software designed to capture, organise and analyse information from both internal and external software using horizon scanning techniques that are widely considered as best practice in competitor analysis.”
Ami was formed in 1999 by some individuals from the areas of aviation and electronics. These professionals applied the rigorous standards from those fields to the development of their software; those standards, they say, impart an unrivaled level of reliability to their products.
Cynthia Murrell, August 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Wikipedia Travel Site Anticipated
August 8, 2012
Rumor has it that Wikipedia is about to branch in a new direction. CNet News asks, “Wikipedia to Debut Revolutionary Travel Site?” At the time reporter Chris Matyszczyk wrote this article, the new venture had not been confirmed by the company. It is said that the site might be, like Wikipedia itself, free of advertising. The write up tells us:
“It is also reportedly to be bolstered by the arrival of 31 out of 48 administrators of Wikitravel, which does bear more than a passing resemblance to Wikipedia.
“Wikitravel is owned by Internet Brands — a group that includes FlyerTalk and FrugalTravelGuy.
According to Tnooz.com, there has been something of a contretemps between Internet Brands and certain factions at Wikitravel. There has been criticism, for example, of a lack of technological investment.”
Matyszczyk also speculates that the new site could enjoy the same prominent placement in Google results that Wikipedia has captured. He notes that getting trustworthy travel information online is challenging. Is that review really from a hotel guest, or written the hotel itself? Or was it penned by a competing establishment?
It is unclear how a Wikipedia travel site would be any more reliable than existing travel sites, but perhaps the organization has something up its sleeve. We’ll see; Wikipedia has disappointed before.
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Periodical for Linguists?
August 8, 2012
What would a linguistics magazine look like? Back in 2007, Language Log’s Mark Liberman created a spoof cover of the hypothetical “Linguistics Today,” which he reproduces in his recent post, “Linguistics: the Magazine.” He shares two other parody covers for magazines that might be aimed at language nerds, Mignon Fogarty’s “Grammarian” and Jon McWhorter’s “Werd.” Lots of fun, but Liberman isn’t entirely kidding. He proposes:
“Jokes, parodies, and illustrations aside, I really do think that this is a good idea. A semi-ironic supermarket-magazine approach might work — especially for cover stories — but the most plausible core market, I think, would be more a upscale and intellectual one. In addition to those cover stories about the juicier aspects of interpersonal communication, there could be sections dealing with language variation and change, speech and language technology, literary analysis, political language, usage advice, language and gender, linguistic history, advertising language, forensic linguistics, scrabble, whatever . . .”
The write up mentions that the online publication option would probably be “easiest, cheapest, and sanest.” I, for one, would subscribe to such a publication, online or in print. Our burning questions: What system will be detailed in the Road&Track-style exploded diagram? And, more importantly, who will be the person featured in the foldout?
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Designing for the One Percent. Thinking for the 99 Percent.
August 5, 2012
I remember when my family moved back to America from Brazil, where we lived for a while. My teacher in the local Campinas school recommended a tutor. I was a “cabeça óssea” or stupid. No kidding. After three days in Brazil, I was unable to read or speak Portuguese. At age 11 or 12, I was a 99 percenter.
I went to special Portuguese lessons, picked up trash talk from the kids in the neighborhood, and supplemented the Estado de São Paulo schools with something called the Calvert Course. My Calvert Course “teacher” was a missionary of a fervent ilk.
As luck would have it, he stepped on a spider, became delirious, wandered into the scrub which in the 1950s surrounded Campinas, which is now a suburb of the city of São Paulo. “A selvla comeu” or something along those lines. So I missed those Calvert Course lessons. I think I missed a couple or three “traditional” US educational hurdles. When I returned to the US, I popped into the American school without having “taken” the classes my peers enjoyed. No problem. I was plonked into what was called then the “advanced class.” Instant one percenter. Magic.
I zoomed through college and graduate school. I was dragooned by Halliburton Nuclear and three years later, I was recruited by the blue chip consulting firm of Booz, Allen & Hamilton. The “old” BAH was different from the azure-chip outfits sporting the name today. I don’t recall brushing shoulders with the “real” 99 percent, but in Brazil I was not just one of the 99 percent. I was one of the stupider 99 percenters.
I learned one thing about being stupid: A log depends on context and point of view.
What’s happening in the digital world is that the one percent are making the world which they want. The problem is that the 99 percenters don’t have a clue about that world. There are some interesting examples of what I call “one percent think.”
ITEM: “Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas” explains that the Silicon Valley “thing” has eroded innovation. Here’s the passage I noted:
But now much of the transformational potential of the “pure information technology” possibility space has been exhausted to the point of terminal differentiation…Now I look around and see lost opportunities for collaboration everywhere.
ITEM: “The Naked and the TED” is a clever and coruscating (if the New York Times writing covering automobiles can use the word obdormition although I would prefer paresthesia, I can employ a form of coruscate). The write up by a one percenter tackles baloney from two other one percenters, Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna. The précis for the review of the Khanna monograph “Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human Technology Civilization”, only $2.99 is, “Baloney.” One percenters criticizing one percenters is probably not going to have much of an impact on those in the 99 percent.
ITEM: “The Linguistic Interface” explains why a command line interface is not such a bad thing. After all, the article says, “We live in a Kingdom of Nouns.” Here’s the ace quote:
There does come a time when all you want to do is pick up a pencil and draw a cat. But we must remember that we aren’t using an application in which one draws cats, we’re simply acknowledging that paper is a thing we can draw on. There is still no application harness set up to isolate us from the rest of the world, and the pencil is not inextricably bound to the paper. The terminal — a record of the conversation we’ve been having with the shell — happens to be one thing to look at, but even as we scribble over the page we can still talk to the shell, and it can do things to the drawing just as it can anything else. “Now add to this all the pictures I drew of kittens. All of them.”
I can see the folks at the bar in Harrod’s Creek arguing over this insight and not the University of Kentucky football scrimmage.
Google: Communicating Differently, Maybe Less?
August 5, 2012
There was an interesting “official” Google Blog post on August 3, 2012. Google slipped in a zinger with its usually run down of terminated products I never heard about. Here’s the killer passage in “Giving You a Better Google,” which is a heck of an Orwellian title in my opinion:
Google maintains 150+ blogs and other communications channels about our products and services, and so over time we’ll also be closing a number of Google-created blogs that are either updated infrequently, or are redundant with other blogs. This doesn’t mean that we’ll be sharing any less information—we’ll just be posting our updates on our more popular channels.
When online content disappears, how does one know what was there? One doesn’t. Does the Wayback Machine or the Library of Congress tweet project captures the information? I don’t think so. Are the data in these blogs potentially useful going forward? I can’t answer the question. I do know that if content is not online, it does not exist.
George Orwell allegedly said:
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
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