The second part of broadband is latency, which he compares to pneumatic tubes. Although he abandons the highway metaphor because he didn’t find it fit his understanding of latency, the pneumatic tube example didn’t work for me. As I’ve always understood it, latency is the delay in starting a transfer. Perhaps, if we could go back to the highway metaphor, latency could be compared to those traffic signals at freeway on-ramps that I remember seeing as a child in Los Angeles. (If you are driving with one or more passengers, you can bypass the signal, but who would ever do that?) At any rate, you can’t travel on the highway until you actually get on the road. Incidentally, the purpose of the signal is to reduce highway congestion, but I don’t think it makes anyone’s overall trip any faster.
Planes Are Fast… Sometimes
Speaking of transportation metaphors, my favorite way of comparing latency and throughput is in terms of airline travel. It can take hours to move a few miles to get started on your trip. For example, you take a taxi to the airport, wait in line to get check a bag (if you still do that), clear security, wait for your flight to begin boarding, board the plane and get to your seat, wait for the flight crew to secure the aircraft, and wait for your pilot to queue up for take-off. At the end of all that, you’re finally airborne. All that waiting is latency, and it’s why it’s much faster to take a train to Philadelphia from New York than to fly there, unless you’re just traveling from one airport to another.
Throughput, on the other hand, is the time you’re in the air, en route to your destination. In airline travel, that’s relatively fast, but as anyone who flies in and around New York knows, there’s plenty of congestion which slows your travel time. And because so many flights go through New York, it wreaks havoc on the nation’s air traffic. The same thing happens in inclement weather in other airports, such fog in San Francisco and snow in Chicago. In those cases, the capacity of each airport diminishes because fewer flights can get through.
By most technical accounts (and even these may still be wrong), the recent agreement between Comcast and Netflix seems to have addressed a throughput problem through an effort at latency reduction. Where many net neutrality advocates worried that Netflix was paying Comcast to give them faster throughput, the agreement is more oriented around removing a middle agent that was introducing latency into the system. Cogent, the company that transported Netflix data to Comcast for delivery to consumers, was not keeping up with demand – not enough staff in the tube transfer room, so to speak – so Netflix worked out a deal to tie their system more integrally to Comcast’s.
Another way of thinking about it was that Netflix cut out some steps towards getting on the plane. It no longer checks a bag, it got PreCheck to go through security faster, and it maybe even gets a ride on a Mercedes right up to the aircraft. Oh, and it always fly nonstop. All that makes the trip faster, cutting down on latency, but it doesn’t get you to the next airport any faster because as far as we know, the Netflix-Comcast peering agreement doesn’t include increased throughput.
Fifty years ago today, Dartmouth University professor John Kemeney and a student ran the first BASIC program.
While I am not quite so old to have been among the first users of BASIC, it was something I used as a child in the 1980s. It was the built-in programming language for my first computer, a Radio Shack TRS–80, and for my first Apple computer, an Apple IIc+.
In the second half of the 1970s, BASIC became the standard language for home users and hobbyist programmers. There wasn’t much packaged software, so people expected to write some of their own. Computer magazines published program listings for people to type in, then save to cassette tape.
To this day, BASIC remains the only programming language I ever learned, and it still frames my understanding of all computers and digital technology.
Late to the party yet again, I finally watched the first two episodes of the new Mike Judge–helmed comedy series, Silicon Valley. If you haven’t yet traded for someone’s HBO Go credentials, you can watch the first episode, temporarily, of course, on YouTube.
The series traffics in some of the most well-worn stereotypes of software engineers and Internet entrepreneurs that are familiar to even the most casual observers of the tech-business world. The series centers on three budding software engineers living in an incubator started by a veteran of the Valley. Played by T.J. Miller, Erlich cashed in on his start-up years ago. Housing these engineers is his way of giving back, but not without taking a ten-percent stake in any product they develop while in residence.
The first two episodes of the series portray some of the more ludicrous aspects of Silicon Valley. As I watched it, I kept thinking of Evgeny Morozov’s latest book, To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. Morozov argues that the titans of tech are guilty of two hubristic sins. Solutionism is the relentless need to solve problems, including those than might not even need solving, and to strive for perfection. The second, Internet Centrism, is the fervent belief that the Internet and digital technologies are the tools to solve every problem. As I am yet to finish the book, it appears that these two function as rhetorical justifications for creating new digital industries that enrich those developing these solutions. In short, it’s about getting paid.
We see the vapid speeches given at a TED Talk where audiences listen in awe of rhetorically flashy speeches on changing the world without much substance. We see an anti-intellectual venture capitalist who, like Peter Thiel, advocates that young people take $100,000 of his money to drop out of college to pursue their entrepreneurial ideas.[1] We learn that an algorithm, properly deployed, can do something as mundane as search through a compressed data stream or something as important as curing cancer, the ultimate human miracle. We also see how spiritual advisors coddle super-rich CEOs are hell-bent on disrupting everything and are out to change the world, provided they make a ton of money doing so. Real money, too, not Bitcoin.
Read the book and watch the series for two contemporary and poignant critiques of an industry that is inflated in just about every sense of the word.
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Evegeny Morozov, To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, New York: Public Affairs, 2013, 129. ↩
With the Paschal moon hanging above us, thus signaling the beginning of Passover, the US tax filing deadline also hangs above us.
Like I’ve done for the last few years, I procrastinated until the last minute to file because I regularly have to send checks to both the federal and state governments. One of the many inequities of the American tax system is that someone who cobbles together a living from multiple sources usually has to pay when he or she files. When I start collecting a stack of W2s and the occasional 1099 in February, I start dreading preparing my tax return because I know I’m writing some big checks in April.
The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering, 1774. Image via New York Historical Society, Image # 27307.
In years past, I usually either do my taxes on paper by hand or send them to an accountant. This year, I was short on time and money so I resorted to tax software.
Based on the recommendation from The Wirecutter’s Kevin Purdy, I went with the horribly named FreeTaxUSA. When I told one friend what I used to prepare my taxes, she joking asked, “Do they also offer check cashing and pay-day loans?”
Purdy’s article recommended three software packages: TurboTax for most everyone, TaxACT for people with more time and more complex situations, and FreeTaxUSA for experienced tax filers. Since I started working multiple jobs, I have learned as much as I can to optimize my tax situation, and I really didn’t need to answer questions about specific “life events.” I simply needed to report a bunch of numbers and calculate the allowable deductions. This was also very cheap: $13 for filing both a federal and state return, regardless of income.
Try it if this sounds like your approach to preparing your income tax returns.
Only the most wealthy can afford a pied-à-terre at the One Hyde Park development opposite Harrods, in Knightsbridge, but it seems even the average £22m price tag is not enough to buy a superfast internet connection. The flats went on sale just three years ago, but their broadband speed is well below the national average.
While it might be tempting to shed a crocodile tear for these poor little rich people, it turns out their broadband speeds aren’t all that slow, at least compared to the United States.
One Hyde Park has a top speed of around 10 megabits per second – well below the 18Mbps national average.
By comparison, the average broadband speed in the United States is 10 megabits per second, the same as the relatively “slow” speeds of One Hyde Park and well below the average data rate of the United Kingdom.
But, of course, in the early twenty-first century, being rich has its perks. The developer is looking to accelerate those broadband speeds.
The building’s developer, Candy & Candy, says it is now negotiating with BT to install a 100Mbps service.
In the United States, one hundred megabits per second for residential broadband is almost science-fiction fast.
Since I’ve been teaching undergraduate survey courses in communication, such as media industries or media technologies, I’ve had to learn how certain recording technologies work. One of those is the earliest sound recording devices of the nineteenth century.
Sound is vibrational energy that displaces air. To record sound you need to capture those vibrations.
The earliest sound recordings, such as those developed by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in the 1860s and later by Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner in the 1880s, are like fossils of those vibrations. A needle that fluctuates carves those vibrations into a surface: Scott used lamp black, Edison used tin, and Berliner used zinc and beeswax. Those sounds and their vibrations are preserved inside of these tiny grooves.
The shared image is two magnified photos of a record-player needle riding the grooves of a vinyl record. But with most things people shared online, it’s hard to tell whether the image is real. It looks plausible, but I’ve been burned before on sharing other things that “look plausible.”
After a few minutes of searching the web, I found a more reputable source for magnified images of a vinyl record. In 2005, students in an optics class at the University of Rochester magnified several small objects to demonstrate the capabilities of a scanning electron microscope.
One of the objects they magnified was a vinyl record.
The grooves of a vinyl record magnified 500x. Image courtesy of University of Rochester: URnano.The grooves of a vinyl record magnified 1000x. Image courtesy of University of Rochester: URnano.
These look a bit different than the viral image I saw on Facebook, and they’re not marked up with explanatory text and watermarks. However, they show how sound in its physical form as ridges along an otherwise smooth groove.
If you’re wondering about more modern sound recording devices, such as compact disk, they did that, too.
The pits of a CD magnified at 20,000x. Image courtesy of University of Rochester: URnano.
This image is actually magnfied 20x more than the vinyl record. I’m guessing they did so to reveal a perceptible variation in the disk surface. Because a CD is a digital storage medium, you’re not looking at sound. You’re looking at representations of digital information, which in turn, must be converted back into vibrations that we hear as sound.
I’m glad these students magnified both a vinyl record and a CD, among many other things. If the prognisticators are correct in predicting that we’ll one day buy more vinyl records than CDs, we may wonder what the CD looked like, how it worked, and why we resorted to such a complex way of storing sound when a simpler solution[1] existed for over a hundred years.
Today is April Fool’s Day. Since yesterday, I’ve been on high alert carefully scrutinizing anything that could be a prank. I usually forget about today—being too preoccupied with this, that, or something else, but this year, I was expecting it so I’ve been fully prepared. Although this heighten skepticism has taken most of the fun out of today, I did get a few choice pranks.
Make a Photo without a Camera
The folks at Lomography, makers of analog film cameras for the hip art-school set, has announced a new spray that will allow you to slowly expose an image onto a roll of film.
I fell for this one at first, partly because I saw it on March 31. It seems completely feasible until you read that it takes up to 24 hours for a decent exposure. I thought that was a typo. But the giveaway in this video was in the time-lapse sequence, where the guy stands with the roll of film in the dark. I’m no expert in Greek, but I know you need light to make a photograph.
Canon Wildlife Camera
Speaking of photography, I saw this announcement come across my RSS feed this morning from The Digital Picture, an expert website for Canon photographers.
This is a very compelling prank. A camera like this makes some sense. However, as far as I know, no one has ever made a flagship (D)SLR camera specifically for one application. (Okay, fine, Canon has made two cameras specifically for astrophotography.) As I skimmed the article, I thought it was real, until I realized what day it was.
Bryan, the site’s owner, even included a link to the B&H website so you can pre-order this camera. However, that link takes you to an “April Fool’s” page, revealing that you have been had!
Apple Buys iFixit
A good April Fool’s Prank is one that seems plausible and incredible at the same time. Apple buying the hub for online do-it-yourself repair manuals seems both plausible and incredible. The press release includes some very humorous details, admitting they sold out.
“Everyone has a number”, admitted Kyle Wiens, iFixit’s CEO. “I didn’t think there was a reasonable number that would make me say, ‘You know I was going to change the world with repair documentation but here’s a number.’” In the end, Apple gave us a number that we couldn’t refuse.
I saw this from the spoil-sports at MacRumors, who not only revealed this and other “stories” to be April Fool’s hoaxes, but admitted that they did not intend to “participate” in any prank news stories. That makes sense since some of the rumors they reference are a bit unbelievable, even if some are spot-on.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/615757
The other is, The Field, a spin-off of the critically acclaimed series Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which I haven’t yet seen (shame on me, yes, I know).
http://www.hulu.com/watch/615758
Honestly, I figured out that these spin-offs were fake. However, I was very impressed that they went through the trouble to make two very good looking videos.
Fake United Jeff’s Improvements for United Airlines
The Twitter account for the fake Jeff Smisek, CEO of United Airlines, is one of the few Twitter feeds I read like a blog, where I scroll back to each tweet until I read them all. Today, he’s been dispatching fake announcements to improve United Airlines, such as this one to solve the labor dispute between the airline and its two sets of pilots (former Continental and former United).
United announces investment in first phase of ATP Drone, a program to launch passenger service via unmanned drone by 2020. #suckitALPA
EFF Reports that MPAA is to Update its Copyright Curriculum for Kindergartners
The Electronic Frontier Foundation sent out a “very special” issue of its newsletter, the EFFector.
A few of the stories were pretty obvious pranks. For example, they mention an NSA program, IMPENDINGSLUMBER, that is designed to “intercept children’s bedtime stories.” But one was a little too close to reality to be an obvious prank. Here it is in its entirety:
Citing numerous psychological studies that indicate children under the age of eight respond primarily to fear-based cues, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is adding another character to its “Sharing Is Bad” copyright curriculum: the “Fair Use Creep,” a four-headed monster in a trench coat. “We think these children will respond well to characters like the Fair Use Creep,” said MPAA chief Chris Dodd in a press conference Friday. “And by respond well, we mean cower in fear.”
Doesn’t it seem a bit extreme for the motion picture industry to infiltrate children’s curriculum with lessons on copyright maximalism? This must be a joke, right? Sadly, it’s not.
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One of the many lessons I cover in teaching digital technologies is the Open Source movement.
My explanation hinges on how computer software is based on human-readable code, when run through a compiler, results in binary that a computer can run. In order to improve the software, such as fixing a bug or adding a new feature, one needs access to the source code. Most commercial software keeps its code locked up, and they treat it as their own property. Open Source presents an alternative. It allows anyone to modify, improve, and redistribute the code as part of a collective effort to create a better product.
The folks at Bitblueprint and Moving Monday have produced a video explaining Open Source, using LEGOs.
We learn about open source through two “non-technical” examples: skateboarding and house building. However, those struck me as highly technical examples.
A less technical approach might be to explain what happens with musical compositions performed live by a cover band. In this case, a written musical composition would be the source. A composer could perform and record that song and allow others to perform and modify it as well. With this open source license, any other musician could the perform the composition and even rearrange it. Others could follow suit and adapt the composition into a variety of different genres. By releasing the musical composition into the world, the composer arguably gave it a much longer life than it would have had as the sole property of the composer.
The only drawback would be to distinguish between open source and public domain.
The Cinema One is a set-top box[1] that allows you to rip your entire movie collection—DVDs and Blu-ray disks—so that you can watch it instantly on your big TV. But because the Cinema One bypasses the copy protection on those disks, Kaleidescape had to seek the blessings from the Hollywood studio cartel. And boy did they make it unusable. Pogue writes:
When you want to play a Blu-ray movie off the Cinema One, you have to hunt down the original disc you own, insert it into the Cinema One’s slot, and wait for it to load. You’re not playing the disc; you’re just confirming that you own it. But you’re also losing 80 percent of the value of having a Cinema One! What happened to “any movie in your collection, instantly”?
If you’re not dissuaded by the fact that the Cinema One doesn’t work any better than playing a Blu-ray, the price tag might. It costs $4,000.
Doesn’t BitTorrent seem easier?
Pogue is right in pointing out that this term is antiquated, but we still call it a computer mouse, long after it’s lost its “tail,” and we still “dial” phone numbers. ↩
The proposal that Tim Berners-Lee sent to his boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who called it “vague, but exciting,” would ultimately become the World Wide Web. That proposal is twenty-five years old today.
The Web of today was built – and continues to be built – by everyone. Yet it owes much to many people, some who came before its invention in 1989, and all those who have since then made it an invaluable resource for humanity.
To celebrate 25 years of the Web we have gathered 24 facts about Tim Berners-Lee, the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the World Wide Web Foundation. In the spirit of the Web, we want your input on what the 25th fact should be. Tell us on social media with hash tag #web25fact.
My nomination for a #web25fact would be a ratio that would consider the disparity between producers and consumers of web content. For each person that builds a web page, how many have never even considered doing so?
