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The Internet

Submission + - Japan: 900 Gigabyte upload cap, download uncapped (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "While the Broadband Bandits of the US are contemplating bandwidth caps between 5 gigabyte and 40 gigabyte per month, the largest telco in Japan has gone ahead and laid down some heavy caps for Japans broadband addicts. From now on if you upload more than 30 gigabyte per day, your network connection may be disconnected. Just think of it... if you're in Japan and want to upload the HD movie you shot of yesterdays wedding, you soon might hit the limit. The downloaders do not face similar problems"
The Internet

Submission + - Will ferrets bring you the Exaflood?

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "Ars Technica had two good stories on the future of the Net. One story examines the future of broadband networks and how ferrets will be bringing it to you. The article points to a new OECD-study on how we will need 50Mbit/s minimum in the coming years. (Also explaining why squirrels and sharks are natural enemies of the internet)The paper also examines business models and regulation for new networks.
The other one is an interview with Andrew Odlyzko of the Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINTS) project, explaining how the predicted Exaflood that would overflow the web is not happening and the growth of traffic is actually slowing and there is no sign that ISP's cannot keep up with bandwidth growth."
The Internet

Submission + - OECD: fiber may mean less broadband competition (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by foptical
foptical writes: A massive report (PDF) from the OECD says that fiber is the key to keeping up with expected demand for broadband in the years ahead. Conversely, the reliance on fiber may ultimately result in less broadband competition, even in places with mandated line sharing like Europe. From Ars Technica's coverage: 'Even if line-sharing is still desired by regulators, it may be more difficult in practice. It turns out to be much cheaper for alternative ISPs to provide one backhaul link from a central office serving 70,000 people to their own network. Doing that from 20 local nodes is substantially more expensive and could also prove technically difficult on systems that share bandwidth, such as cable and fiber PON networks (separating out one user's traffic is much harder than on point-to-point systems like DSL).'
Communications

Submission + - OECD says 50Mbit/s minimum and wireless not enough (oecd.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (famous for the Broadband Stats the US has been slipping in) has published two papers on Developments in Fibre Technology and Investment and Public rights of way for fibre deployment to the home Conclusions are: For the period 2010-2020 speeds of 50 Mbit/s downstream and 10 Mbit/s upstream may be required to enable the parallel consumption of services (HDTV, radio, videoconferencing, security etc.) over the network. These speeds are significantly higher than the current OECD definition of broadband at 256 kbit/s, but are necessary to allow the end-user to enjoy a full range of services in parallel and to allow competition between the providers of these services over the network.
Both in performance as in investment the wired technologies have the advantage. Wireless will be used to bridge the first meter, but not the first mile.
Cable and DSL-based networks are already deployed worldwide and it is likely that Docsis 3.0 and VDSL2 respectively will be the upgrade technologies chosen by most telecommunications companies. Both, however, have limits to the amount of bandwidth they can provide to end-users and no clear upgrade paths should bandwidth become constraint. All-fibre networks have no foreseeable bandwidth problems.
Google

Submission + - OECD Broadband stats using Google Moving Graphs (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "Google recently gave people the possibility to use motion charts, just like prof. Hans Roslin of Gapminder.org fame. I haven't used it to show the distribution of wealth and health around the globe, but to display the progress of broadband in the OECD. One of the variables is the amount of households that have a PC. In countries where this percentage is relatively low (USA) broadband penetration is low too."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - RIPE 55 Sings For IPv6 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: To promote the switch to IPv6, Gary Feldman gave an exciting performance of "The Day The Routers Died" at the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam. The song (to the tune of "American Pie") included lyrics like "be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die". Gary received a standing ovation.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - The day the Routers died (secret-wg.org)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "The RIPE 55 meeting has just concluded. There was much debate on what to do on the imminent depletion of the unallocated IPv4 pool in 2010. We could do nothing or we could create a market place and facilitate transfer of IP-adresses, but it's all a train wreck waiting to happen. This is best shown however by a beautiful song "The day the routers died" also available on Youtube written and performed by Gary Feldman. So please all upgrade to IPv6 soon, or else you will not get 40Gbit/s to your mother."
Privacy

Submission + - U.K. kids get RFID chips in school uniforms

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Ten schoolchildren in the United Kingdom are being tracked by RFID chips in their school uniforms as part of a pilot program. If the program proves successful as a way to hasten registration, simplify data entry for the school's behavioral reporting system, and ensure attendance, Trevor Darnborough, whose company, Darnbro, filed for a patent on securing RFID tags to clothing, hopes other schools will be interested.

David Clouter, a parent and founder of Leave Them Kids Alone, a children's advocacy group, condemned the plan. "With pupils being fingerprinted and now this it seems we are treating children in a way that we have traditionally treated criminals," he told the Doncaster Free Press.
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Honest feedback 6

Journal by The Fun Guy

Exit interview:

I don't have to fix you. I think you know that. You are a natural leader, and you quickly established yourself as the leader of this team, without question. You're very smart, very capable. You're extremely flexible, creative, hard-working and very goal-oriented. There is a nobility in how idealistic you are, how focussed you are in serving the public and in your overriding concern with the mission of the organization.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - UK conspired with mobile companies on roaming (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "The Times revealed that the UK government actively conspired with phone companies to keep mobile roaming charges high. A Freedom of Information Request revealed that the UK Government were "not happy bunnies", when the European Union wanted to lower charges for mobile roaming in the EU dramatically. Ewan Sutherland, a leading telecoms policy consultant, said: "I hadn't fully appreciated that the Government had gone over to the Dark Side to that extent." Even now the charges are excessively high at 49 eurocent per minute. But the chances that the EU would actually support a simple idea that would promote competition are marginal. Data roaming charges (for Brits) are even more excessive at up to 21USD per Mbyte."
The Internet

Submission + - Should the BBC pay ISP's for iPlayer (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "In the UK debate has broken out about the BBC's iPlayer. Part of it, because it does'tn support open source, but seems to be some evil Micrsoft plot. Another part of it is because of the choice for the Kontiki P2P distribution system, which according to some important industry insiders and bloggers is unfair towards ISP's. In this article I evaluate the arguments in favour of making content providers pay for their bits and show how these are flawed and would stifle innovation."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Using Google Adsense for Charity

Journal by Raindeer
I hope Slashdot-readers will help me generate more attention for this idea and come up with ideas to get this idea higher up Google's to-do-list. I have blogged about this on my blog. The origins of this idea lie in me looking at the enormous amount of $8 on my Adsense account (the payout limit is $100) and wondering if there was something better to do with it, instead of waiting 12 years for the first check.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Profanity Blacklist is dumb. 8

Journal by Omestes

Quickly running through my foes, just to see how much hatred I garner, and discovered that the Profanity Blacklist (UID 825460) still hates me, even though I haven't used any "foul" language in sometime. Well fine, I did mention the word "asshole" earlier, but I really don't see how offensive that term really is to anyone.
Google

Submission + - Appeal to Google! Use Google Adsense for Good!

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "I sent the Google Adsense people the following suggestion/feature request; for Google to add an option to allow the pay-out of (a part of) the Adsense revenue of a site directly to a charity. The Google ads on my blog don't generate much income and well, I don't really care about it, they're partially a service to let people find interesting companies and partially a way for me to keep track of statistics (before Google Analytics came around). It's a bit of a long tail idea, where many small sites help generate a big amount of money for charity. I hope some people in the blogosphere help to give this idea some thrust and also encourage Google to allow people to easily let a charity become the beneficiary of the revenue the Google Ads generate."
The Media

Submission + - A photo journalist critisizes Creative Commons

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "Sion Touhig, an award winning photojournalist, wrote a very interesting piece on how the internet has changed the industry of photojournalism. He blames this (at least partially) on the Creative Commons. Though I disagree with him on this, it does remain a fascinating read on how the lower costs to produce content, the lower transaction costs in finding and disseminating content and the decline in advertising revenue for mainstream media is changing an industry. There are some good reactions already on his blog "

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