Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes By Doc Searls on Wed, 2005-11-16 02:00. Industry News We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths.
This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.
Here's a brief outline of the article. If you want to go straight to the solution, skip to the third section:
*
Scenario I: The Carriers Win
*
Scenario II: The Public Workaround
*
Scenario III: Fight with Words and Not Just Deeds
Scenario I: The Carriers Win
Be afraid. Be very afraid. --Kevin Werbach.
Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net's free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries?
Do you believe a free and open market should be "Your choice of walled garden" or "Your choice of silo"? That's what the big carrier and content companies believe. That's why they're getting ready to fence off the frontiers.
And we're not stopping it.
With the purchase and re-animation of AT&T's remains, the collection of former Baby Bells called SBC will become the largest communications company in the US--the new Ma Bell. Verizon, comprised of the old GTE plus MCI and the Baby Bells SBC didn't grab, is the new Pa Bell. That's one side of the battlefield, called The Regulatory Environment. Across the battlefield from Ma and Pa Bell are the cable and entertainment giants: Comcast, Cox, TimeWarner and so on. Covering the battle are the business and tech media, which love a good fight.
The problem is that all of these battling companies--plus the regulators--hate the Net.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word. The thing is, they're hostile to it, because they don't get it. Worse, they only get it in one very literal way. See, to the carriers and their regulators, the Net isn't a world, a frontier, a marketplace or a commons. To them, the Net is a collection of pipes. Their goal is to beat the other pipe-owners. To do that, they want to sell access and charge for traffic.
There's nothing wrong with being in the bandwidth business, of course. But some of these big boys want to go farther with it. They don't see themselves as a public utility selling a pure base-level service, such as water or electricity (which is what they are, by the way, in respect to the Net). They see themselves as a source of many additional value-adds, inside the pipes. They see opportunities to sell solutions to industries that rely on the Net--especially their natural partner, the content industry.
They see a problem with freeloaders. On the tall end of the power curve, those 'loaders are AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large sources of the container cargo we call "content". Out on the long tail, the freeloaders are you and me. The big 'loaders have been getting a free ride for too long and are going to need to pay. The Information Highway isn't the freaking interstate. It's a system of private roads that needs to start char
A layperson reading a summary of the journal's article in the mass media doesn't pay much attention to these qualifiers. But they know it's from an allegedly respected journal, so it must be true, and it's everywhere, so they must be certain. And anthropogenic causes are listed in such a way as to be interpreted as the primary reason for the event. What I take issue with is the method used to combine various suppositions into a single argument. The overall weight of the resulting argument translates into certainty in the public eye.
"ecological landslide that is probably irreversible"
"undoubtedly connected to climatic warming"
"The warming is believed to be a combination of...."
"suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed"
It's stunning that this "sudden" event wasn't foreseen, and yet an often crushing certainty is paraded to explain it, and warn that it was inevitable, irreversible, etc. Exactly how often can the sky fall? Does anyone wonder why they're not taken seriously any more?
"In regards to all the media attention, I think that by far the coolest thing to come from all that attention was when I was Slashdot'd. That was like getting the key to the city from the Mayor of Geekville."
Actually, there's a reason for this. To say that someone was "speeding" is to claim they're committing an offence. A "high rate of speed" doesn't necessarily mean being over the limit. I know they use cop-speak all the time ("the car was blue in color") but this one has a purpose.
When Regular People fire up the Linux desktop for the first time, the browser, office suite, email client, IM client, file manager, etc, each need to carry over as much as possible of the Windows application settings and all or very nearly all of the user data. Without this, the hill is just too steep to climb and Regular People will not make the climb.
This is not quite true. People will migrate, even with some pain, if they know the cost of not migrating. From privacy issues to monopolistic/illegal practises to security problems, there are many good reasons to stop using Microsoft products.
The third issue is a lack [of] simplicity.
That's right. Asking someone during an install if they want Gnome or KDE is useless if they have nothing to base a decision on. Give them one and they can explore later. It's traditional to underestimate lusers here on Slashdot, but believe it or not, they can grasp certain concepts... if not all:)
Regular People don't want their OK and Cancel buttons reversed -- tossing out years of finely tuned muscle memory
That's a joke, right? Finely tuned muscle memory? To do what, install spyware? Those who work on GUIs for Linux should feel free to continue improving on the use of meaningless button labels in Windows. I applaud their efforts.
No one can deny that Linux has to overcome some problems. As an outsider, and off the top of my head, some of these problems are: the confusing multitude of different distros (which is at the same time a good thing); the rough-around-the-edges interface; the lack of a single, unified marketing campaign leading to little or no brand recognition; and the merest mention of a CLI to a Windows user.
But it's worth trying. Today I got Ubuntu to run (not a big accomplishment, happily)... and tonight, I was asked "What's Linux?"
I continually advocate open source software, both personally and at the workplace, and I really consider that a natural evolution toward Linux. If you can use, for example, Firefox in Windows, then you can certainly use it in Linux. There is no migration pain, and there is now one less stumbling block to adopting Linux.
I once helped build a house for Habitat for Humanity. A critic asked me, "Do you really think building one house is going to solve the housing crisis?" And I answered "No. But it's going to solve this family's housing crisis."
In the same way, Linux may not be ready for the desktop; but it's ready for mine. Maybe it's ready for someone else, too. Thank you to its developers, and keep up the good work.
You're absolutely right. Having worked for some time in the print media here in Ontario, covering local issues and municipal and provincial politics, I can assure you that unscrupulous journalists will use any tactic and promise you anything to hear what they believe they need to hear, and it _will_ end up in print.
Having said that, it seems publishers are no different. Mine wanted us to track down the parents of an underaged girl who'd been assaulted, for comments. The police never released her name, of course (they're not allowed), but the town was small enough that it would not have been difficult.
Oh, let's see, a comparison between weather forecasting and climate modelling.
Both rely heavily on computer modelling. In fact, most who study meteorology know far more about C than they do about weather.
Both assume implicitly that there is a "steady state" or equilibrium from which the atmospheric environment varies, whether the time scale is long or short, or the scale large or small.
Both create models based on smaller pieces of the landscape - for example, one kilometre squares.
Both use highly speculative guesses about things such as, say, the net result of cloud albedo.
Both are equally unsuccessful at either predicting the future or replicating the past.
So yeah, besides that, they're completely different. Dipshit, indeed.
The shower's peak is on Monday evening at 22:20 GMT. That is 10:20 P.M. where you are, and 5:20 P.M. over here. It's worth looking before and after this time, however, by hours or even a day or two. Technically the best time to watch any meteor shower in general is at midnight.
The Geminids are visible from the entire planet, I believe, although the northern hemisphere is favoured. You should see them.
I live in the country but Ontario may be cloud covered on Monday night/Tuesday morning. If not, I plan on setting up a few cameras and seeing what I can catch on film.
I'd love to see a do-not-call registry in this country. However, given the track record of this government, I'll make the following not-so-bold predictions:
If they say it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it will cost billions. Even in Canadian currency, that's a fair sum.
Because of the glacial pace of operations, the registry will be so out of date as to be useless.
Random chunks of the database will be carelessly left within public view.
The work of creating the database will be given to firms which have traditionally been financial supporters of the party.
The database will be deficient in some fundamental way, e.g., it won't be able to handle multiple numbers for individuals, and correcting this will cost millions more.
If the office handling the registry is outside Ottawa, it will be in a riding that elected a member of the party.
I could go on; colour me cynical. Far better than a "do-not-call" registry would be an "okay-to-call" registry. Why should I have to opt-in to prevent intrusive calls? If you want to receive unsolicited phone calls, you should jump through the hoops to get them, rather than others doing so to prevent them. The last thing I want to do is give this government my phone number. Let's not even start talking about filling out a census form....
Keep fighting. Straw bale is the housing material of the future far more so than cardboard. Here in Ontario, Canada, even with extremes of temperature and humidity, it's more acceptable every year, as each zoning district sees other places ok'ing it. From what I understand, millions of tons of straw are burnt as waste every year.
In fact, not far from here stands what is thought to be the largest load-bearing straw bale structure in North America, the Robins' Nest Retreat, and even closer is the straw bale home built by Chris Magwood of Camel's Back Construction. With Peter Mack, Magwood wrote Straw Bale Building, which is definitive, thorough, and recommended. (Magwood, incidentally, is off the grid.)
Of course, authorities are more likely to accept structures that are thought to be permanent and safe. (For example, a post-and-beam structure with straw bale infill is a known quantity in this area.) I would worry that tearing a house down quickly only proves that... it can be torn down quickly. Good luck.
And oh yeah, before someone asks: tests by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that a properly built straw bale wall has a two hour fire rating - twice that required of conventional construction.
Santa should be bringing me a USB drive, and while I don't need to sync anything, I'm looking forward to being able to demo Firefox quickly and easily. Once they see it running, it sells itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes
By Doc Searls on Wed, 2005-11-16 02:00. Industry News
We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths.
This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.
Here's a brief outline of the article. If you want to go straight to the solution, skip to the third section:
*
Scenario I: The Carriers Win
*
Scenario II: The Public Workaround
*
Scenario III: Fight with Words and Not Just Deeds
Scenario I: The Carriers Win
Be afraid. Be very afraid. --Kevin Werbach.
Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net's free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries?
Do you believe a free and open market should be "Your choice of walled garden" or "Your choice of silo"? That's what the big carrier and content companies believe. That's why they're getting ready to fence off the frontiers.
And we're not stopping it.
With the purchase and re-animation of AT&T's remains, the collection of former Baby Bells called SBC will become the largest communications company in the US--the new Ma Bell. Verizon, comprised of the old GTE plus MCI and the Baby Bells SBC didn't grab, is the new Pa Bell. That's one side of the battlefield, called The Regulatory Environment. Across the battlefield from Ma and Pa Bell are the cable and entertainment giants: Comcast, Cox, TimeWarner and so on. Covering the battle are the business and tech media, which love a good fight.
The problem is that all of these battling companies--plus the regulators--hate the Net.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word. The thing is, they're hostile to it, because they don't get it. Worse, they only get it in one very literal way. See, to the carriers and their regulators, the Net isn't a world, a frontier, a marketplace or a commons. To them, the Net is a collection of pipes. Their goal is to beat the other pipe-owners. To do that, they want to sell access and charge for traffic.
There's nothing wrong with being in the bandwidth business, of course. But some of these big boys want to go farther with it. They don't see themselves as a public utility selling a pure base-level service, such as water or electricity (which is what they are, by the way, in respect to the Net). They see themselves as a source of many additional value-adds, inside the pipes. They see opportunities to sell solutions to industries that rely on the Net--especially their natural partner, the content industry.
They see a problem with freeloaders. On the tall end of the power curve, those 'loaders are AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large sources of the container cargo we call "content". Out on the long tail, the freeloaders are you and me. The big 'loaders have been getting a free ride for too long and are going to need to pay. The Information Highway isn't the freaking interstate. It's a system of private roads that needs to start char
A layperson reading a summary of the journal's article in the mass media doesn't pay much attention to these qualifiers. But they know it's from an allegedly respected journal, so it must be true, and it's everywhere, so they must be certain. And anthropogenic causes are listed in such a way as to be interpreted as the primary reason for the event. What I take issue with is the method used to combine various suppositions into a single argument. The overall weight of the resulting argument translates into certainty in the public eye.
"ecological landslide that is probably irreversible"
"undoubtedly connected to climatic warming"
"The warming is believed to be a combination of...."
"suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed"
It's stunning that this "sudden" event wasn't foreseen, and yet an often crushing certainty is paraded to explain it, and warn that it was inevitable, irreversible, etc. Exactly how often can the sky fall? Does anyone wonder why they're not taken seriously any more?
"In regards to all the media attention, I think that by far the coolest thing to come from all that attention was when I was Slashdot'd. That was like getting the key to the city from the Mayor of Geekville."
Actually, there's a reason for this. To say that someone was "speeding" is to claim they're committing an offence. A "high rate of speed" doesn't necessarily mean being over the limit. I know they use cop-speak all the time ("the car was blue in color") but this one has a purpose.
From TFA:
This is not quite true. People will migrate, even with some pain, if they know the cost of not migrating. From privacy issues to monopolistic/illegal practises to security problems, there are many good reasons to stop using Microsoft products.
That's right. Asking someone during an install if they want Gnome or KDE is useless if they have nothing to base a decision on. Give them one and they can explore later. It's traditional to underestimate lusers here on Slashdot, but believe it or not, they can grasp certain concepts... if not all:)
That's a joke, right? Finely tuned muscle memory? To do what, install spyware? Those who work on GUIs for Linux should feel free to continue improving on the use of meaningless button labels in Windows. I applaud their efforts.
No one can deny that Linux has to overcome some problems. As an outsider, and off the top of my head, some of these problems are: the confusing multitude of different distros (which is at the same time a good thing); the rough-around-the-edges interface; the lack of a single, unified marketing campaign leading to little or no brand recognition; and the merest mention of a CLI to a Windows user.
But it's worth trying. Today I got Ubuntu to run (not a big accomplishment, happily)... and tonight, I was asked "What's Linux?"
I continually advocate open source software, both personally and at the workplace, and I really consider that a natural evolution toward Linux. If you can use, for example, Firefox in Windows, then you can certainly use it in Linux. There is no migration pain, and there is now one less stumbling block to adopting Linux.
I once helped build a house for Habitat for Humanity. A critic asked me, "Do you really think building one house is going to solve the housing crisis?" And I answered "No. But it's going to solve this family's housing crisis."
In the same way, Linux may not be ready for the desktop; but it's ready for mine. Maybe it's ready for someone else, too. Thank you to its developers, and keep up the good work.
You're absolutely right. Having worked for some time in the print media here in Ontario, covering local issues and municipal and provincial politics, I can assure you that unscrupulous journalists will use any tactic and promise you anything to hear what they believe they need to hear, and it _will_ end up in print.
Having said that, it seems publishers are no different. Mine wanted us to track down the parents of an underaged girl who'd been assaulted, for comments. The police never released her name, of course (they're not allowed), but the town was small enough that it would not have been difficult.
I gave him my notice and quit.
Oh, let's see, a comparison between weather forecasting and climate modelling.
Both rely heavily on computer modelling. In fact, most who study meteorology know far more about C than they do about weather.
Both assume implicitly that there is a "steady state" or equilibrium from which the atmospheric environment varies, whether the time scale is long or short, or the scale large or small.
Both create models based on smaller pieces of the landscape - for example, one kilometre squares.
Both use highly speculative guesses about things such as, say, the net result of cloud albedo.
Both are equally unsuccessful at either predicting the future or replicating the past.
So yeah, besides that, they're completely different. Dipshit, indeed.
The shower's peak is on Monday evening at 22:20 GMT. That is 10:20 P.M. where you are, and 5:20 P.M. over here. It's worth looking before and after this time, however, by hours or even a day or two. Technically the best time to watch any meteor shower in general is at midnight.
The Geminids are visible from the entire planet, I believe, although the northern hemisphere is favoured. You should see them.
I live in the country but Ontario may be cloud covered on Monday night/Tuesday morning. If not, I plan on setting up a few cameras and seeing what I can catch on film.
... when you pry it from my cold, dead Nokia.
I'd love to see a do-not-call registry in this country. However, given the track record of this government, I'll make the following not-so-bold predictions:
I could go on; colour me cynical. Far better than a "do-not-call" registry would be an "okay-to-call" registry. Why should I have to opt-in to prevent intrusive calls? If you want to receive unsolicited phone calls, you should jump through the hoops to get them, rather than others doing so to prevent them. The last thing I want to do is give this government my phone number. Let's not even start talking about filling out a census form....
Keep fighting. Straw bale is the housing material of the future far more so than cardboard. Here in Ontario, Canada, even with extremes of temperature and humidity, it's more acceptable every year, as each zoning district sees other places ok'ing it. From what I understand, millions of tons of straw are burnt as waste every year.
In fact, not far from here stands what is thought to be the largest load-bearing straw bale structure in North America, the Robins' Nest Retreat, and even closer is the straw bale home built by Chris Magwood of Camel's Back Construction. With Peter Mack, Magwood wrote Straw Bale Building, which is definitive, thorough, and recommended. (Magwood, incidentally, is off the grid.)
Of course, authorities are more likely to accept structures that are thought to be permanent and safe. (For example, a post-and-beam structure with straw bale infill is a known quantity in this area.) I would worry that tearing a house down quickly only proves that... it can be torn down quickly. Good luck.
And oh yeah, before someone asks: tests by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that a properly built straw bale wall has a two hour fire rating - twice that required of conventional construction.
Santa should be bringing me a USB drive, and while I don't need to sync anything, I'm looking forward to being able to demo Firefox quickly and easily. Once they see it running, it sells itself.