Communicating in a networked world
Facebook has opened up our individual Facebook profiles so that we have no way to restrict certain pieces of information, such as who our friends are, which are now publicly available.
EPIC—the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and nine other co-signing organizations have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about this problem.[1] Read what Larry Dignan says on ZDNet about this. I investigated and found that we’re all naked now… [Read more…]
The Traveling Geeks are at it again. This time the destination is Paris for LeWeb and some other tech meetings.
Organizing a tour for 15 geeks was a nightmarish task for TG Co-Founder Renee Blodgett, who worked for weeks to put this one together – much shorter lead time than for previous tours. And her co-organizers Eliane Fiolet and Phil Jeudy, plus two web developers, did a heroic job.
The online developers were tasked with creating the new web site, but I came in for the last few weeks to preside over one of my (current) specialties – ensuring that we can mash information together in real time. Here’s what it required and what I learned: [Read more…]
When all data for Sidekicks got lost recently [read this article in the Wall Street Journal] was it a cloud failure or was it a single system failure?[1] [also New York Times article]
In the sense that data was being stored somewhere and the customer didn’t know where it was, then yes it was a cloud failure. But I contend that it was also a failure caused by the existence of a single-point-of-failure. (As system developers, this is our constant nightmare.) The product/service was set up to use a single data service with (apparently) inadequate backup. That created the possibility of this single-point-of-failure. The real failure was that T-Mobile didn’t provide the option to back up your data in a location under your control, so that you could later on restore it if the central service went down. [Read more…]
You can learn a lot about a place if you sit for a while and observe the types of vehicles passing by on the road. During one of my trips to India I sat at lunch and watched the traffic on the busy highway. Upon finishing, I stepped outside and snapped photos of some of the traffic on a busy highway over the course of about five minutes. You can look at my photos and read my observations below the fold…
The snapshot to the left is of the rear of a (big) truck. Big TATA and Mahindra trucks do the heavy lifting in India, carrying huge cargoes everywhere. They are brightly painted—each one different from all the others—and on the back of every one is the legend “Blow Horn — Use Dipper at Night.”[1] When passing one of these behemoths, every driver honks, and sometimes the honking continues the entire time you’re passing. The honk is both a request to pass and a warning that I’m passing. Unlike the US, the honk is a courtesy, not an annoyance (in California it is illegal to honk except to warn other drivers in case of danger).
Lest you think otherwise, the photos I’m showing you express my admiration for a country where everything is used that possibly can be, and is re-used when it breaks. Very few things go to waste here.
And here are my photos: [Read more…]
The free flow of information, which is facilitated by the Internet, should have no respect for political borders. Nations that try to restrict the flow of information by either cutting it off at the border (using Internet routers and filtering) or by cutting it off in the “last mile” to your computer (using content filtering and throttling [see China’s Golden Shield] – or by thwarting net neutrality[1] principles) will ultimately fail to do so. Information wants to be free.
We are a species that communicates by telling tales, and we learn from the stories told by others.
YaleGlobal Online carried an interesting article [part II is the part you want to read] examining China’s dual standard when it comes to interference in what they call their “internal affairs.” China strongly opposes the granting of visas to His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits countries around the world — calling it “interference in China’s internal affairs.” However, the attempts by the Chinese to block the Dalai Lama’s appearances can just as easily be interpreted as Chinese attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. They have succeeded in many countries, and notably failed in countries such as Germany and France. And particularly in the US, where the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, and in Canada, where he received honorary citizenship in 2006.
Here’s what YaleGlobal said about their two-part article: “China, a significant beneficiary of globalization, is happy to go out into the world, but seems less willing to let the world come in, according to writer Frank Ching. In fact, China, which asserts that it does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, appears to do the exact opposite, especially with regard to issues surrounding alleged separatism in China. Notably vocal whenever a foreign leader meets with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama or a country grants him a visa, Beijing claims that such actions “grossly interfere” with China’s internal affairs and “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people. For a country that prides itself on having signed more human rights treaties than the US – certainly a mature approach to international affairs – such a reaction seems oddly truculent. Indeed, as Ching argues, globalization is a two-way street where the benefits hopefully compensate, even outweigh, the loss of sovereignty. Rightly or wrongly, China seems yet to agree with such logic. – YaleGlobal”
[1] Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the [US] Federal Communications Commission, on net neutrality