In this last wrap-up post for Speeds and Feeds, I address what may be the most important issue in the future of personal computing architecture: consistent data access across multiple platforms.
Perhaps it's my multi-platform background, but I've never demanded or expected consistency in form factors, user interfaces or even capabilities. Variety in these areas is great; it's what makes the personal computing market so big. Variety is also why I keep so many PCs and consumer electronic devices around (see photo); I like knowing I have the right tools for many different jobs.
My active gizmo collection. Back row: Apple MacBook Pro (note the discolored helicopter tape protecting the palm rests), Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, NEC Versa LitePad Tablet PC. Front row: 4G iPod, iPhone, iPod Classic, OLPC XO-1. All of these items provide independent data storage.
(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)On the other hand, I really don't like the fact that all of these machines are, in effect, independent little islands of data storage. Sure, most of these things have sync functions to help move the relevant data among them, and syncing is fine if you only have one PC and one gizmo, but at some point it becomes a pain in the neck.
In 2000, as a columnist for Electronic Business magazine, I wrote a piece titled "Where do your data live?" In it, I lamented the proliferation of isolated data stores on the growing number of personal electronic devices.
I pointed out that the computer industry had already found a better way to manage this problem: caching. Caching technology allows data to be shared among many storage subsystems. Each datum is "owned" by exactly one storage device, and all of the stores negotiate among themselves to change ownership as needed according to how the data are used.
I proposed that we adopt a caching model instead of thinking of every gizmo as a separate storage device. Each file could carry tags that identify where the master copy of the data should reside and what other devices should have copies of each item. (This tagging can even be extended to individual records in databases such as address books.)
This approach would eliminate the need to move data around manually. Any two connected devices could figure out for themselves if any data need to be synchronized between them--and the Internet can keep all of our devices connected almost all the time. Cloud storage makes a pretty effective location for those master copies, too.
I still think this is a good idea. There are some proprietary solutions along these lines, such as the sync features of Apple's MobileMe and Microsoft's Windows Mobile Device Center, but these solutions leave much to be desired, including interoperability. I'd love to see an open standard for data sharing, including file system extensions to support the necessary tags.
A few things have changed since 2000. USB and Wi-Fi have become ubiquitous, making it much easier to connect devices together (though there's still plenty of room for improvement in that area). The storage capacity of personal electronic devices has soared; the Newton I used in 2000 has been replaced by an iPhone with over 680 times as much flash memory.
Perhaps even more importantly, it's become practical for almost any personal electronic device to access and process the vast majority of data objects we own. There aren't very many files on my laptop hard disk that can't be at least viewed on my iPhone. Most of the exceptions, things like Photoshop images and HD video files, can at least be converted to compatible formats.
These changes have made a caching strategy even more valuable. Of course, automated data movement makes effective data security even more important (see "Wrapping up Speeds and Feeds, part 4: Security").
Ideally, our devices should stop acting like separate systems at all, but rather as multiple views into one consistent set of documents. Each device can still have its own look and feel, but not its own independent storage.
I think these last five posts have suggested enough projects to keep everyone busy for a while. When that's all done, I'll explain what we need to do next!
After 19 months of consulting--in Silicon Valley, we prefer that term to "unemployment"--I've accepted a job.
Once I start, I'll have to stop blogging. But while I'm still independent, I'd like to wrap up here by offering a short series of articles addressing several key topics in the area of personal computing.
Today, the topic is energy efficiency.
Energy efficiency has become a major selling point of today's personal computers, especially laptops, because power consumption determines battery life.
Unfortunately, laptops are being optimized for energy efficiency in a way that isn't fully consistent with the needs of laptop users.
Advances in process technology and CPU design have greatly improved the power efficiency of modern microprocessors when they're running. This improvement is most visible at the highest performance levels.
Over the last few years, dual-core laptop processors have gone from maximum speeds of roughly 2.4GHz to 3.0GHz without consuming any more power. The newest quad-core chips provide much more aggregate performance in a similar power envelope.
This improvement in operating efficiency is great for gaming, mobile video editing, and a few other applications. But it's not very meaningful for most consumers.
What the rest of us need is non-operating efficiency, the ability of the laptop to consume very little power when it isn't doing much because that's what our laptops are usually doing.
We need laptops that can do nothing--more efficiently.
I've been looking at the newest crop of ultra low-power laptops. Based on published benchmark data, they consume an average of 8W to 10W of power when doing essentially nothing (what we call "idle power"). Even the best of them consumes about 6W of power at all times, getting 10 hours of battery life from a 60WH battery. Maybe 2W of that is spent keeping the display on. The other 4W to 8W is just wasted by the CPU and other motherboard circuitry.
When your laptop isn't doing much--for example, when you're typing in your word processor--it's using only slightly more CPU performance than your cell phone is when you're texting. Your cell phone consumes very little power to do this meager amount of work, usually no more than 0.25W or so for the CPU and its support chips. The corresponding elements of your laptop, however, may consume 50 times as much power under similar conditions.
Some of this difference is inevitable; your laptop has wider data buses, more and faster RAM, and so on. Nevertheless, your laptop motherboard could be designed to idle along on 1W or so.
That would give you a total system-level power consumption of around 3W--half the power of today's most energy-efficient laptops and about one-quarter the power of an average machine. Because there's a relationship between peak CPU speed and idle power, today's fastest laptops consume 20W or more at idle. With more energy-aware designs, these systems could see even greater proportional reductions.
In other words, adopting more aggressive methods for reducing idle power could easily double battery life across the board, and some systems would see much bigger improvements.
This is not merely a quantitative improvement. Consider what happens when your laptop can comfortably operate for 20 hours with the display on, or 60 hours with the display off.
For one thing, it never has to go to sleep. Your cell phone never really goes to sleep, and that's a great part of its value. Your laptop can have this same cell phone operating model.
Closing the lid should turn off the display, but the machine should keep running. It can stay connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi or 3G, periodically download your new e-mail messages, watch that eBay auction, and do whatever else you need it to do...all the time. Just plug it in to recharge while you're asleep. (If the laptop is in your briefcase, it'll have to slow down a lot to keep from consuming too much power, but that's easily managed.)
When you're ready to start using the machine actively again, it shouldn't take any longer to turn the display on again than it does to physically open the lid. Think "always on," not "instant on."
All of this is possible with today's technology, but nobody's doing it. I think one of the reasons we don't see this usage model is that laptop buyers don't know to ask for it. Incremental improvements produce adequate sales figures with each new laptop generation, and everyone figures that's good enough.
But mark my words: the first full-function laptop that works like a cell phone--always running, always connected, always ready--is going to hit the market like a sledgehammer. Everything else is going to seem obsolete overnight.
I'm very impressed by the Nook, Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader. It's clear B&N has studied Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle very carefully.
The Nook has almost all of the major features of both product lines, plus a few more, with few competitive disadvantages. B&N has also followed Amazon's lead on support services. The Nook has a very good online e-book store as well as applications to support e-book reading on Macs, Windows machines, and smartphones.
(Credit:
Barnes & Noble)
The Nook doesn't ship until the end of November, but here's what I found most significant from the announcement and the pages at nook.com:
Industrial design
I think the Nook is attractive and well-designed. It looks better than the Kindle 2, but not as good as Sony's Reader Touch Edition, which offers a larger screen in a smaller form factor. Also, Sony's forthcoming Reader Daily Edition is only slightly larger than the Nook, but offers a much larger screen.
Secondary color display
This feature surprised me. It seems expensive and insufficiently functional for what must be a significant added cost. The low resolution of this display (480 x 144, according to a CNET blog post) means it won't be useful for much beyond the basic user-interface features B&N has already described: book covers, menus, and a keyboard for note-taking. (Although I should note for the record that while B&N says "Its full-color touchscreen encourages you to bookmark, add notes, and highlight passages," I haven't found a photo on the company Web site depicting the virtual keyboard shown in some of the pre-release images. Perhaps that's one of the features still under development.)
By comparison, the secondary color screen built into the Alex e-book reader from Spring Design, shown in another recent CNET story, is large enough to be useful. Unfortunately, it's also large enough to be very much in the way, leading to an awkward device. Spring Design and B&N need to make up their minds-- are they making e-book readers or something else?
... Read moreI've been thinking about buying a new gizmo, and it turns out I'm not the only one in the family having these thoughts.
My sister sent me an e-mail over the weekend:
I need a 3G card for my laptop and I'm going to get it from Verizon. What should I ask for? I just don't want them to try to sell me more or less than I need.
Coincidentally, I've been looking into the latest options for mobile broadband access for a couple of months now, ever since the two-year contract ran out on the Option GT Max 3.6 Express I bought in 2007.
Here's an expanded version of my reply e-mail:
There are four basic kinds of 3G wireless modems: USB dongles, PC Card and ExpressCard devices, portable 3G/Wi-Fi access points, and cell phones with wireless "tethering."
USB modems are the most popular type and usually the least expensive. They plug in like a thumb drive, and they're easy to deal with. But I don't like them because they can stick out pretty far, which makes them awkward and a bit fragile. The larger ones don't work at all with USB jacks that are too close to other ports. Also, the cheapest ones can have relatively poor reception.
If your laptop has a plug-in card slot, it's either for PC Cards or the more recent ExpressCard type. Your user manual will tell you. Verizon offers one of each. They don't stick out so far, which makes them a little more rugged while in use, though you should still remove them before putting away the laptop. I find them more convenient than the USB type.
The Novatel MiFi 2372 connects up to five Wi-Fi devices to 3G mobile broadband networks.
(Credit: Novatel Wireless)A portable access point is worth considering if you have more than one gizmo to connect to the Internet while you're traveling. For most North American users there's only one such device available, the Novatel MiFi.
Sprint and Verizon offer the MiFi 2200, which provides typical download speeds from 400Kbps to 1.4Mbps (Verizon's estimate; actual speeds vary widely).
Novatel also makes the MiFi 2372, which works on AT&T, T-Mobile, and pretty much any international phone network. This is the one I want, but as far as I can tell AT&T and T-Mobile don't offer discounted pricing on this gizmo yet. If purchased directly from a mail-order supplier, it's very expensive--well over $300.
Whichever version you get, the MiFi is a standalone gadget a little smaller than an iPhone. It has its own battery and recharges with a small wall adapter or by connecting it to your laptop (which makes it work like a USB wireless modem). It connects to the cellular data network and creates its own little Wi-Fi hot spot that can be used by up to five systems at once--like your laptop and an iPod Touch.
I don't have one of these myself, but friends do, and it looks like the most convenient way to get online while traveling.
As an aside, I should mention that one of the earliest mobile broadband/Wi-Fi gizmos was developed by a friend of mine, Tor Amundson. He called it the Stompbox, and wrote about it for Make magazine. More information is available on one of his sites, Stompboxnetworks.com.
Earlier this year, Tor told me about an interesting alternative to the MiFi. Cradlepoint makes gizmos that are functionally equivalent to the MiFi, except they work with a user-provided USB or ExpressCard modem. While this approach is noteworthy, I think the MiFi is generally a better solution for most users.
The last option is to get a 3G-compatible cell phone that supports "tethering"--that is, using the cellphone itself as a modem. This can work pretty well, though I had a lot of trouble tethering the Cingular 8525 phone I had before I got the Option card.
The major downside of tethering is that you may not be able to talk on the phone while using the Internet. Apparently AT&T and T-Mobile 3G phones are more likely to support simultaneous operation than those on Verizon or Sprint. I regard this limitation as unacceptable, though you might feel differently. The upsides are that tethering can be somewhat cheaper than getting a separate 3G modem because there's only one contract, and there's nothing else to carry around.
(The iPhone still doesn't allow tethering.)
The most important thing to keep in mind, no matter how you get online, is that mobile Internet usage is quite strictly limited by all carriers. Verizon's $40/month service provides only 250 MB/month of data transfer, and that can run out very quickly. Even the $60 service's 5GB limit can be exceeded in mere days if you spend too much time on YouTube or some other video streaming service.
If you go over your plan limit, per-megabyte charges are really painful. According to Verizon, the 5GB overage rate is 5 cents/MB and the 250MB overage rate is 10 cents/MB. In other words, a single HD video on YouTube could easily cost you a few dollars to watch once you're over the limit.
For comparison purposes, AT&T's overage fees are $10/100MB for its $40/month plan and 49 cents/MB for the $60/month plan. The latter rate is the cell phone equivalent of the death penalty, since hardly anyone is going to go only a few megabytes over the 5GB allotment. A careless user could easily incur hundreds of dollars in overage fees in a single month.
So whatever you buy, be careful how you use it. And if you share your connection (using a MiFi, or via Internet Connection Sharing in Windows), make sure your friends stay away from Hulu.
Another thing to consider is whether you need international access. If you intend to travel a lot, you can get a wireless modem that will work in most foreign countries. Be sure to ask about the countries that matter to you; Japan and South Korea, in particular, have very specific requirements. What Verizon calls "Global Ready" modems are somewhat more expensive to buy, but again, be warned: international roaming can be *very* expensive. (In the U.S., the charges are the same as for any other 3G modem.)
In my opinion, the best way to get Internet access while traveling internationally is to find cheap or free Wi-Fi hot spots and skip the mobile broadband. This approach is less convenient, but there's no risk of coming home to a very expensive bill from your cell phone company.
Mobile data traffic is doubling every nine months, according to Cisco Systems. By 2013, mobile traffic will hit 2 exabytes--2 million terabytes--per month.
For some vendors, the growth rate is even higher. AT&T says its network load has been growing by 4.5x per year for the last two years, in large part (I assume) because of iPhone sales. You may have read about AT&T's pledge to spend over $12 billion this year to expand its wireless and broadband networks, including new 3G spectrum with better coverage and trials of 4G service.
At the Linley Group's Tech Processor Conference this week in San Jose, Calif., we learned what effect this growth is having on equipment makers, especially the companies making the microprocessors that go into network gear.
According to that same Cisco study, the problem goes well beyond iPhones. A 3G-equipped laptop "can generate as much traffic as 450 basic-feature phones" and 15 times the traffic of an iPhone or BlackBerry.
Networks have also gotten smarter, so network processors have much more work to do. Instead of just hundreds or thousands of clock cycles of work per packet on the network, new functions like firewalls, intrusion detection, and antivirus scanning to keep smartphones and laptops safe can require 100,000 cycles of processing on each packet.
Factoring in the growth in the network itself, Michael Coward of Continuous Computing, a company that sells equipment, software, and services to the telecom market, said that network operators need to achieve a 1,200x boost in processing performance between the systems deployed in 2008 and those that will be needed in 2013.
... Read more
Google is developing an operating system of its own, based on the company's Chrome browser and intended primarily for use in low-cost Netbooks. Now I'll tell you why I think Google is doing it.
Like any other commercial enterprise, Google is trying to make money. No secret there. But Google doesn't make money the way other computer software companies do.
(Credit:
Google)
Microsoft, for example, makes money mostly by selling software (and a few hardware products) to computer users. There are two sides to this plan. Microsoft wants to make computers more valuable, so buyers will spend more of their income on computers; and it wants to increase the share it receives of that budget.
What makes Google unusual is that it wants a share of a different budget: the time people spend in front of their computers. Google makes money by displaying ads on a small part of the display while people view Internet content on the rest. Not all the time, of course, but the opportunity is there, and Google's multibillion-dollar revenue shows how well this strategy can work.
Turning the Chrome browser into the Chrome OS is technically straightforward, though of course it'll take a lot of work. A browser already has most of the key elements of any OS: application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow application software to display content and accept user input, store and retrieve data from mass storage, communicate over the Internet, and so on. Google will have to add a driver model and some other things that don't exist in a browser, but it can learn from how these things are done in existing operating systems, and possibly even borrow much of the code directly from Linux; there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
Existing operating systems such as Windows support a far wider variety of programming languages and provide far more services than Chrome OS will, but Chrome will probably be plenty good enough for Netbooks. (Personally, I don't think Netbooks are good for much, and many Netbook buyers seem to agree as shown by the huge volume of refurbished systems now available from remarketers like Woot.com.)
CNET News Poll
So, Google is after your time, not your money. It can try to get more of your time in the same ways Microsoft tries to get more of your money. Will the Chrome OS increase the time people spend in front of the computer? No, quite the opposite. There will inevitably be less to do on a Chrome OS computer than on a Mac or Windows machine. Buying a Chrome-based Netbook means giving up the chance to run most Windows games, Apple's iLife suite, and other popular software.
But for Google, the key is this: once you've got a Chrome system, Google's in charge of ALL the time you spend with it.
I don't think that's good enough, and it looks like Google feels the same way; the company intends to implement the whole Chrome OS environment within the Chrome browser so Linux, Mac and Windows users can also run Chrome applications. This plan is necessary, since Google can't very well hope to muscle aside the incumbents, but it means that Netbook buyers will have no reason to prefer a Chrome-based machine.
Or will they? Linux may be free, but Google can undercut that price if it's willing to cut OEMs in on its ad revenue. In this way, Google could bring to market a subsidized pricing model we usually associate only with 3G-equipped notebooks. Google won't have nearly as much money to throw around as the cell phone operators do--maybe just a few unpredictable dollars per month averaged across all Chrome OS users vs. the reliable $60/month subscription fees associated with 3G cards--but that could still add up. Even a $20 subsidy could amount to 10 percent of the sale price of a cheap Netbook, which could tip the balance in favor of Chrome.
Like I said, it seems to me that Netbooks aren't the ideal platform for this strategy. The Google model can't work as well on a small screen, since users will be reluctant to share what little space they have with Google's ads. But they'll work well enough, and Google has no realistic chance to place Chrome on mainstream notebook and desktop systems except in the same narrow markets where Linux sells today. (And not all of those; for example, Chrome has no shot at the engineering workstation market, where Linux is popular.)
So I'm sure we'll see some number of Chrome OS-based machines on the market in 2010, and then we'll see what happens. My guess is that Chrome will do about as well as Linux has done in the Netbook business: not well. A lot of people will try it, possibly enticed by those lightly subsidized prices and the usual interest in novel computing platforms (the information-technology equivalent of the Coolidge effect, which perhaps could be known as the Glaskowsky effect.)
And then most of those people will return those machines, or give them to their ungrateful children, or just toss them onto a shelf to gather dust, and they won't buy more of the same--at least not until Google spends a few more years building Chrome OS into a fully competitive product, which I'm sure it will do. Google's big enough, and it knows there's a business here. It just won't be ready to take full advantage of the opportunity just yet.
I received an interesting e-mail from a reader over the weekend. Dr. Katherine Gold, a lecturer with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, had some questions related to Netbooks (or small notebooks), broadband Internet access, and physical computer security. After some discussion, Dr. Gold and I decided to see if some of you might be able to help answer her questions.
Here's the situation: Dr. Gold is setting up a research project to investigate the benefits of online support groups for low- income women in the Detroit area who have recently suffered the loss of a stillborn child.
Most women benefit from such services, but they tend to be less available to the poor for because they are less likely to have computers and Internet access. Also, these women often have other children to care for, jobs to hold down, and limited transportation options, so they may not be able to take full advantage of Internet access at public libraries or other facilities.
In Dr. Gold's experience, the greatest need for support often comes at night, when such facilities aren't open, anyway.
The bottom line here is that Dr. Gold wants to supply her participants with computers they can keep at home for the duration of the study, along with some kind of Internet connection.
There are several key challenges for this approach: cost, convenience, theft resistance, ease of use, maintenance, and so on.
Dr. Gold and I agree that a Netbook--the original concept of a Netbook, a machine no larger or more expensive than necessary to provide basic Internet access--would provide a good platform for this application. A properly selected and preconfigured system would provide the necessary functionality at minimum cost. A Netbook is both less attractive to burglars and easier to secure than a desktop PC with a separate display and keyboard.
The Acer Aspire One is a small but complete notebook computer.
(Credit: Acer)In fact, when Dr. Gold wrote to me originally, she had already identified what I think is probably the most appropriate off-the-shelf solution: the $99 special offer from Radio Shack for an Acer Aspire One with built-in wireless broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The only drawback to this offer is that it requires a two-year commitment to a $60-per-month AT&T wireless data contract, which adds up to another $1,440 on top of that $99 retail price. That's a lot of money for a study like this, especially when it's scheduled to last only one year.
Dial-up access would be cheaper, but it would preclude testing the therapeutic value of high-bandwidth Internet services such as videoconferencing and would likely interfere with ordinary telephone usage, which makes it a nonstarter in many households.
Dr. Gold provided some statistics on the stillbirth problem: it's 10 = times more common than Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), involved in 1 in 100 births in the Detroit area. As one might expect, stillbirth leads to much higher rates of depression and anxiety disorders compared to live birth, and these problems have significant social costs.
Stillbirth is three times more common among African- Americans in Detroit than among whites there, explaining the special value of extending Internet-based therapy to lower-income women.
I suggested that a corporate sponsor might be willing to help defray the costs of the hardware and Internet access, and that was one of the considerations that led us to this post. It seems to me that a study like this could help demonstrate that the value of small notebooks goes well beyond students, and the value of wireless broadband goes well beyond business travelers.
I'd also like to draw attention to something that's always been obvious to me: "rugged" is the corollary to "small."
Smaller notebooks are more likely to be carried around, particularly without the protection offered by a briefcase or backpack, so they ought to be more rugged as well. There are a lot of low-cost small notebooks out there, but there are few, if any, low-cost rugged models.
Ruggedness lends itself to theft resistance as well; the traditional Kensington security slot is less effective on a machine with a flimsy plastic case and a lightweight internal metal frame.
Another thing we'd like to hear about from you folks out there--have you had any experiences with Internet-based theft deterrence and recovery services such as Computrace LoJack for Laptops? Such a service could be a helpful addition to this study and similar applications.
Feel free to comment below, or write directly to me and Dr. Gold. (Addresses obfuscated a little to deter spam.)
I'll post updates as Dr. Gold's project moves along.
Interesting news from the DemoFall conference held this week in San Diego:
Plastic Logic--a company founded to commercialize electronics built on flexible plastic substrates--demonstrated a prototype e-book reader (not yet named) and announced that it plans to ship this product in the first half of next year. You can read the press release for yourself.
This particular gizmo is very attractive. It uses a large, flexible electronic paper display based on technology from E Ink (the same company that makes the displays for Amazon.com's Kindle and Sony's Reader), but the device overall is remarkably thin and light.
And the whole thing is somewhat flexible, so it won't break if it gets slightly bent in a backpack or briefcase. Flexible doesn't mean invulnerable, but it's a lot better than the brittle glass displays of existing e-book readers.
Check out this video from DEMOfall, in which Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta demonstrates the prototype. I see some minor problems in the prototype's display--some dead lines and odd drawing glitches--but nothing that should interfere with the scheduled launch.
More importantly, even as a prototype, the display's contrast ratio seems to be better than that of the Kindle or Reader, mostly by virtue of the white being whiter--I'd have to make a direct comparison to be sure, though. I also see all of the critical features I want in an e-book reader: good display resolution... Read more
This post will no doubt confuse those who accused me of taking money from Comcast for writing last week's piece on Comcast's Internet usage cap.
If it helps them feel better, they have my permission to suppose that DirecTV offered me a larger bribe. It isn't true, but they don't seem to care about the truth, anyway.
But those of you who have read some of my even earlier posts may have noticed that I'm not exactly happy with Comcast, and that while I get my Internet access from Comcast, I actually get my TV service from DirecTV, a company I happen to like a lot. (Even though it disappoints me sometimes, I pay my DirecTV bill every month--and the company has never paid me a dime.)
So when Comcast picks a fight with DirecTV, I'm not just going to stand idly by.
In this case, it's a fight over which television provider offers more high-definition programming.
Comcast is currently running a clever commercial based on a fictitious game show called "You might think DirectTV has more HD than Comcast...but you're wrong."
In this show, contestants are asked whether Comcast or DirecTV offers more HD "choices" in a given place and time--for example, in Chicago at 7:12pm.
The answer, according to Comcast, is always Comcast. (I'm as shocked as you are!)
The trick here is that Comcast includes... Read more
When Comcast announced last week that it was instituting a formal usage cap for residential customers--a total of 250 gigabytes of data transfer (uploading plus downloading), as described here--I didn't think much of it, except to be happy they finally defined a critical element of their service guarantee. The previous level of ambiguity was annoying and arguably unlawful, as I described here last October.
Few Comcast customers will ever consume that much bandwidth, and in fact it's probably several times what Comcast's network can provide to all users anyway. If a large fraction of Comcast's customer base is now encouraged to start sharing its own high-definition home movies on peer-to-peer file-sharing services, network congestion will impose a much lower limit.
But over the weekend I read some of the news coverage and blogger opinions of the cap, and I have to say that some of it is just astonishing. People are making claims and demands that violate the basic rules of mathematics and the laws of physics. It looked like a digital form of mass panic, like the sky was falling.
In this story, the falling acorn was represented by Karl Bode at Dslreports.com, whose article announcing the cap (here) was highly speculative but still reasonable.
Blogger Om Malik volunteered for the role of Chicken Little in calling the cap "the end of the Internet as we know it," assuming other carriers follow Comcast's lead.
But Malik's analysis is preposterous. The video-on-demand services Malik claims Comcast is trying to block... Read more
