Weee Man
Originally uploaded by willster.
“It represents the electronic waste
produced by the averageperson
throughout their life-time.
Made up mostly of dead computer
parts such as mice it also included
washing machines and other such
abandoned materials. It’s now
become a piece of art that is touring
around the UK.”
Anyone who has been paying attention to current technology news lately would have come across the news stories about how major telecommunication companies in the US (Comcast, Bell South, etc) are pushing for a tiered internet service (greedy capitalist dogs that they are).
What’s a tiered internet service? Well, the telcos are complaining that high-traffic sites like Google and streaming video sites (maybe youtube?) are taking up too much “space” on their tubes. So essentially they want to charge these high bandwidth sites a price for not throttling their services. So if you were signed up to Comcast for your internet services in the States (say 512kb ADSL), and if a start-up in Australia came up with a funky new video-streaming service, Comcast may decide not to let the data bits through normally, maybe throttle the speed down to 256kbs, because, well, Dingo (the company) didn’t pay Comcast to use their tubes, so why should they let data through for absolutely free?
The fact that you’ve paid Comcast for usage of their pipes already isn’t enough it seems.
Basically the US doesn’t have any clear “net neutrality” legislation. Now with the ISPs theatening net neutrality - that data travels at the lower of the speed of the sender and the receiver - I hope the US puts in place something clear to make net neutrality a right.
While this “throttling” won’t directly affect non-US residents, obviously, it will have a huge indirect effect - the US presents a huge marketshare. Popularity in the US would have a big part in determining popularity on the web, and thus further development of the application.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet (what a great title to have…) has written a short but succint article on net neutrality on his blog. It’s a pretty good read. (via Ars)