Posts by Fred Bauer

Hitler kicked off iPhone

Recursion

n. See Recursion.

"YouTube even provides, in proper postmodern style, a parody clip of Hitler furious at all the Downfall parody clips"

US bandwidth gets new caps

@Slaytanic

Actually, it does cost more to send 1E6 bytes than to send 1 byte (assuming you want to send them in the same amount of time.) A router with 10 Mb of capacity and 10Base-T ports costs orders of magnitude less (both capital and maintanance)than a router with 10Gb ports and a 100Gb+ backplane. Additionally, the costs to get from the ISP's aggregation points to the peering points are based on bandwidth (Priced a 10Gb Metro-E connection lately?) So, as users actually consume more of the bandwidth sold to them, it does increase costs for the ISP.

Now, I do agree that charging per GB is a scam, because if you use that bandwidth during off hours it doesn't increase costs. A much more consumer-friendly system is to push your heaviest users to using off-peak resources.

US rolls out 'Vicinity RFID' to check IDs in moving vehicles

@AC

Only a few states seem to be issuing the Enhanced Driver's Licence/ID cards (EDL/ID). Washington was first, with New York and Vermont also issusing them. The Texas governer blocked them from being implemented there.

Note that these are Optional, and Extra Cost, as they are designed to replace passports.

Morning voting in America

@voing result

Nothing wrong with telling people who you voted for. What IS illegal is giving someone a receipt (that they can leave with) showing which way they voted.

Some queues are much longer

Here in Maryland... got in line at 6:10, with the polls opening at 7:00 AM. There were probably 250 people already in line at that point. I finally voted at 8:30h wasn't as bad as I had expected.

Password pants-off at Lloyds Bank

Bureaucracy

From some of the stories above, it seems like the folks at Lloyd's have been taking their management practicies from that classic Infocom game.

Bell Canada chokes P2P and privacy?

@Herby

"Presently, there is only ONE type of packet on the internet, and it is "First Class", not subject to inspection since I'm paying the full rate."

"First Class" most certainly does not apply to the internet. The ONLY type of packet on the public internet is "Bulk Rate". It MAY get there, eventually, or it may get lost. Absolutly no guarantees. If you want "First Class", you will pay MUCH more, and you will need to be on a network controlled by one entity.

For a phone call, you are (effectively) paying, per minute, for a dedicated connection (of at most 64 kbps, likely much less than that.) I'd be happy to sell you something similar for your internet connection, though I don't think you'd be willing to pay the price.

@Lucifer's Supporter

It really depends on how you define "examine"...

If examine means that a Human looks at, or has access to, the packets, then NO, DPI does not "examine" the data.

If examine means that a classification/decision is made about the packets, based on the contents of the packet and a pre-defined algorithm, then every router in the world is guilty of privacy invasion.

Traffic throttling is certanly a concern with users and ISPs alike, and needs to be addressed. But, keep the discussion about competition, etc. and keep "privacy" out of it!

Re: Canada Post Analogy

With the Post, you pay depending on what it is, and how fast you want it to get there... in the US, if I send something as "Media Mail" (also known as book rate), the USPS certanly has a right to inspect my package, and if it's not a book, charge me extra for it (they don't, really, but they can.)

This is no different than a box looking at traffic on port 80, deciding it's not really HTTP, and treating it differently.

@Mark

If you're concerned about some chip "inspecting" your images (and, classifying it as IM/email/whatever you are using to send it) then you'd better stick to Polaroids and snail mail.

Note that we're only talking DPI in the course of traffic shaping... any other "inspection" is a different discussion.

DPI != privacy violation

Much as I detest the thought of anyone "snooping" what I'm using the internet for, Deep Packet Inspection for traffic shaping doesn't worry me, and the "privacy" issue is just peing used as another way to complain about traffic shaping.

In almost ANY traffic shaping device, the packet inspection (be it headers only, or deeper) is done in hardware (typically FPGAs,) with the result being a decision on what type of traffic the packet represents. No one is "looking" at the packets. If classifying packets is a privacy invasion, then ISPs better start providing individual dedicated point-to-point links between each customer and every server that they access, since any router can make decisions based on port number, which would certanly represent an invasion of privacy.

Oh, and what about cache servers? They're certanly an even greater invasion of privacy, since thy not only inspect the URL, they store it...

Paris, because she leaves inspection of the traffic to her chauffer.

US may shoot down spy sat to safeguard tech secrets

Black Money

is the money spent on secret projects, that is never disclosed as part of the public budget numbers.

Amazon's $399 folly book reader

No Good on Airplanes

I read a lot on airplanes (the only time I have the time.) I'd get really annoyed at having to turn off my book for every take off and landing (since they want ALL electronic devices off at that time.) I'll stick with dead trees.

How a bread truck invented the internet

Small Town

I had to laugh at "little town of Etam, West Virginia, halfway up the US east coast."

Etam is by no means a little town... it's more of a cow pasture. In 1977, the only evidence of a "town" was a shell of a building, with a sign out front that read "Sattelite Inn" [sic]. Oh, and it's nowhere near the coast... it's about 150 miles west of Washington, DC.