Internet BYTE8406 Syndrome

There’s an old jargon term called BYTE8406 syndrome, which has as one definition:
The tendency for oppression to waste resources. Derives from the observation that erasing a banned public file does not destroy the information, but merely creates an uncountable number of private copies. It was first diagnosed in September 1984, when the BYTE8406 forum was removed from the IBMPC Conference.
We’re seeing a worldwide example of this at the moment, with various Muslim protesters and even the cartoonists who drew them attempting to suppress publication of some cartoons that appeared in Jyllands-Posten, a newspaper in Jutland in Denmark.

One result has been copies of the cartoons have already appeared in other newspapers in multiple countries, plus a compendium of representations of Mohammed across the ages. On the Internet, the uncountable number of additional copies aren’t just private: many of them are public. Continue reading →

What hath God wrought?

Telegram, b. 24 May 1844, d. 27 January 2006, R.I.P.:
Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.

Western Union Telegram, 27 January 2006

A little less than 162 years before, Samuel FB Morse sent the first telegram, saying:
What hath God wrought?
It took some years for telegrams to become commercially available, and it’s possible there is some company still sending telegrams today, but more than a century and a half is a pretty long run for a technology. Continue reading →

Restoration Blockbusters

Sometimes history repeats itself in some detail:
The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits. A fiasco such as Dryden’s Albion and Albanius would involve a company in serious debt, while blockbusters like Thomas Shadwell’s Psyche or Dryden’s King Arthur would put it comfortably in the black for a long time.

Restoration Spectacular, Wikipedia, last modified 17:31, 3 February 2006.

Continue reading →

Future Financial Firms

Interesting article (noted in Specialty Insurance Blog) about financial firms of the future. It says such firms must focus on core competencies and be flexible about new developments while being driven by customer relations. It emphasises technology to help with this:

New technology continues to deliver more capability at lower cost. Improvements in compression technology, the spread of consumer broadband and the impending shift to Internet Protocol (IP) communications networks will give the financial services industry the infrastructure it needs to deliver on the promise of e-finance. Institutions that do not offer an efficient multi-channel distribution strategy will not be competitive. In an environment of decreasing customer loyalty and increasing customer sophistication, technology is both problem and solution. Electronic distribution will continue to enable easier price comparisons and changes of financial provider. But technologies for enhancing CRM and improving customer experience will assume much greater importance as financial services firms seek to build new customer relationships in fast-changing mass-market segments such as pension products.

Risk management has implications for technology strategy, too. The use of predictive models will continue to expand fast throughout the financial services industry over the coming years, from refining insurers’ estimates of losses, to reducing card issuers’ acceptance of risky customers and honing the trading strategies of investment banks and hedge funds.

The industry response: Upgrading technology to track risk exposure accurately and swiftly across the whole firm will be crucial. Allocating capital to maximise returns relative to risks, real-time knowledge of the firm’s total risk exposure, and an effective, transparent dialogue with regulators, rating agencies and the capital markets will represent the minimum standards for the well-governed financial services firm.

Financial services firms of the future will be characterised by a pervasive customer-centric culture by Marie O’Connor, Finance-magazine.com, 2 February 2006.

Hm, firms that heavily dependent on the Internet will need to be concerned about the risks of Internet security and performance.

Continue reading →

U.S. Congress Members Decry Internet Censorship (in Other Countries)

The Human Rights Caucus of the U.S. Congress complained about alleged censorship in China by Microsoft, cisco, Google, and Yahoo!, as noted by fergie’s tech blog. Microsoft and Yahoo! took more or less the same position Google has been taking, that business in China isn’t business as usual and doing business there at all promotes free expression in China.

Meanwhile, two women were removed from the House Chamber the other night for wearing shirts with writing on them, one saying Support Our Troops, the other noting how many of them had died. The latter was handcuffed and arrested. The House police later admitted she broke no law and apologized, which is more than China does, and of course we’re talking a great difference in scale. So the House Caucus of course has a point ( wish I’d thought of it) even though it would come off better if they’d keep their own house in better order.

A hearing by an actual House subcommittee is expected in a few weeks. Clearly aiding government censorship can have political consequences, which means it is a business risk. Let’s just hope these hearings stay on that track and don’t veer off into reccomending greater U.S. government control of the Internet or further consolidation of Internet ownership by fewer firms.

-jsq

$200 Billion Broadband Scandal

Well, if this is true, it explains a lot as to why the U.S. is dragging far behind Japan and Korea (and probably soon Malaysia) in deploying broadband Internet:

Thumbnail  — In extensive detail, (over 460 footnotes, 330 pages) I prove, with the Bell’s own data, that  the Bell companies systematically lied about their previous fiber deployments  in order to get  changes to state laws to give them more money to build these networks. — What was  promised was fiber to the home, 45mbps, bi- directional, and capable of 500 channels, deployed in rural, urban and suburban areas equally.

By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired.  More to the  point, these networks were funded by customers — about $2000 per household.

— $200 Billion Broadband Scandal by Bruce Kushnick

Meanwhile, Japan and Korea, seeing what was proposed in the states, went ahead and did it in their countries.

Continue reading →

Security for Whom?

Previously I mentioned that Exxon-Mobil had invested a few million dollars in PR against global warming. Well, I don’t know whether there’s actually any connection, but the same company posted its highest-ever profits last year:
Exxon’s revenue last year allowed it to surpass Wal-Mart as the largest company in the United States, and by some measures Exxon became richer than some of world’s largest oil-producing nations. For instance, its revenue of $371 billion surpassed the gross domestic product of $245 billion for Indonesia, an OPEC member and the world’s fourth most populous country with 242 million people.

Exxon Mobil Posts Largest Annual Profit for U.S. Company, By SIMON ROMERO and JOHN HOLUSHA New York Times, January 30, 2006

Meanwhile, Exxon-Mobil says its profits rose 40% last year while the amount paid in taxes rose 14%. What does this mean to the rest of us? Continue reading →

One Reason People are Dubious about Global Warming

Here’s one reason people are dubious about global warming: about $8.6 million pumped into 40 think tanks by ExxonMobil from 2000 to 2003. I suppose less than $9M over 3-4 years is peanuts to a corporation that size, and could be considered a sound PR investment.

Maybe for the current executives and big shareholders, who will all be dead before the largest effects of global warming come into play. I’m not so sure about the rest of us.

-jsq

PS: Link found on Bruce Sterling’s Viridian Notes.

Continue reading →

The Telco Camel in the Internet Tent

I keep alluding to telcommunications companies wanting to limit the Internet. Here’s a pithy summary by Scott Bradner of how the Internet is different and what’s happening now. He notes that telephone companies were present at the earliest public demonstration of the ARPANET and AT&T was even offered an early opportunity to run it. None of the telcos were interested back then, so the followon Internet was mostly left alone both by the telcos and by government regulatory agencies.
This neglect meant that developers were free to experiment with new applications over the Internet. There was no carrier telling users what applications they could or could not run, no carrier that you had to get permission from before you were able to deploy a new Internet-based service. The Internet was just a collection of wires, most of which were bought from the telephone companies by ISPs, who paid what the telephone companies determined was a reasonable fee for use of the wires. The cost of the wire did not depend on what Internet services were running over it, just like the cost of your car does not depend on whom you transport in it. ISP customers paid the phone companies for the wires and paid ISPs for Internet service based on the size of the wire they were using. Everything was simple.

But some of the telephone companies want to change this. They want to charge Google and others to send packets to you. The fact that you have already paid for the wire and the Internet service that Google is using to send those packets is ignored. The phone companies say that they want to let Google pay more to make Google’s packets get to you “better,” but this is the blunt end of the camel well into the tent.

Blocking the power of the Internet By Scott Bradner, Network World, 01/16/06

Telephone companies always used to charge by time, which they do for the INternet in some countries, such as New Zealand, and in Europe some telcos succeeded in charging per byte for a while. Now in the states they’re moving to charge effectively by type of application. I think this means they need to fix their rates. They think otherwise, obviously. I think their thinking is a risk not only to their own businesses, but also to every business that depends on the Internet.

-jsq