nets

Why does the DOJ oppose net neutrality?

According to Wikipedia, the Department of Justice is "designed to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans." So why is it that the Justice Department recently filed a press release stating its opposition to net neutrality? In the statement, the DOJ argues that "consumers and the economy are benefiting from the innovative and dynamic nature of the Internet," and that "regulators should be careful not to impose regulations that could limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities."

Of course, given that almost all locales are limited to at most two broadband carriers--the telephone and cable monopolies--there are already regulations that "limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities." The Justice Department seems to be tailoring its antitrust agenda in such a way as to serve the interests of certain big business interests and not the needs of the American people. If any company could enter the marketplace to offer high-speed Internet access then their position would at least be possible to defend. Were that the case, then people would be free to choose among a multitude of Internet offerings, some of which would likely offer neutrality while others would provide a preferential pipe. Only then would there be some teeth in the argument that the free market would ensure Americans get the best access at the best price. In reality, it is only the massive telecoms and cable companies that are able to provide high-speed Internet, and both camps have an economic incentive to abandon net neutrality.

Does Network Appliance fear open source? Or patent infringement?

We just keep going further down the rabbit hole, and the lawyers haven't even started discussions yet. I'm referring, of course, to NetApp's patent infringement lawsuit against Sun, which Sun has dismissed as "factually incorrect" and, interestingly, driven by fear of open source. ZDNet posted this from Sun:

NetApp's legal attack against Sun's open source ZFS solution which is freely available in the marketplace is a clear indication that NetApp considers Sun technology a threat, and is a direct attack on the open source community.… Read more

Net neutrality--dead or simply hibernating?

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh blogged Thursday on "Ten things that finally killed Net neutrality."

Most of his reasons related to a lack of political support from both Republican and Democratic politicians and bureaucrats. But those all sound like temporary delays to me.

I'm pretty sure Net neutrality will pop back up again because there's an inherent conflict between the business interests of network operators and the desires of… Read more

Ten things that finally killed Net neutrality

If you haven't heard much about Net neutrality this year, you're not alone. It went from being the political equivalent of a first-run Broadway show, with accompanying street protests and high profile votes in Congress, to a third-rate performance with no budget and slumping attendance.

So what killed Net neutrality? Here's a list, in no particular order:

1. The Bush administration. Democrats may control Congress, but the White House and federal agencies matter. And the administration made it perfectly clear on Thursday that no new Net neutrality regulations are necessary. That gives the Republicans in Congress their … Read more

Justice Department: Net neutrality regulations aren't necessary

The Bush administration believes that government regulators should be "highly skeptical" of Net neutrality regulations and instead rely on competition to protect consumers.

The comments came in a public filing that the U.S. Department of Justice sent on Thursday to the Federal Communications Commission, warning against the adoption of extensive Net neutrality rules.

"However well-intentioned, regulatory restraints can inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality' would do just that, with respect to the Internet," … Read more

Sun calls NetApp's blog bluff...with open source...in a blog

It's fascinating to see how blogs are being used these days.

On Wednesday, Dave Hitz, co-founder of NetApp, used his blog to explicate the company's reasons for suing Sun Microsystems over ZFS patent infringement. On Thursday, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, fired back using his own blog, telling a very different story from Hitz's.

And, when I asked NetApp to respond to why it had chosen to respond to Sun now, rather than when Sun announced it was open-sourcing ZFS, Hitz replied...in a comment to my blog.

This is a very new world we live in. It's also one that Schwartz is convinced open source will win, as he suggests (in his blog):… Read more

Favorite free image editors

Adobe Photoshop is a fantastic software product. I use it at CNET every single day. However, I don't own a personal version at home, and I find that I don't miss it much for my own limited image editing and graphic design needs. For cropping snapshots, removing red-eye, resizing, or creating LOLcat images, I turn to the free image editors available at CNET Download.com.

The grandaddy of free design software is the GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program), which provides much of the functionality of Photoshop, with a very large and dedicated community that produces tons of valuable tutorials. However, the GIMP isn't the most user-friendly application. Newbies would be advised to try GIMPshop, which puts a Photoshop-like interface on top of the GIMP's core functionality.… Read more

Comcast denies monkeying with BitTorrent traffic

Comcast on Tuesday denied rumors that the company is filtering BitTorrent traffic running over its network.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used to distribute large data files such as video. The protocol has been used widely throughout the Internet to distribute pirated movies. And sites that use the protocol have been targeted by the movie industry to stop the illegal distribution of copyrighted video.

Broadband providers have also not been big fans of BitTorrent because the use of the peer-to-peer protocol can clog networks with huge files. The blog TorrentFreak claims that several Internet Service Providers have been &… Read more

Top 25 hottest open-source projects at Microsoft

Bayarsaikhan has posted the top 25 most active open-source projects on Microsoft's Codeplex site. Looking at the list, it looks like Microsoft developers spend their time doing much the same as the rest of the Java/other world: play games and make the Web world pretty with AJAX. You can see the top project interests below in the Codeplex tag cloud.

Codeplex is interesting to me for several reasons, but primarily because it demonstrates something that I've argued for many years now: open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.

And it does several things well (better than Sourceforge, in my opinion):… Read more

Nielsen/NetRatings serves up July's social media numbers

Clearly, social-networking metrics are the new black. It seems like just about everyone wants to know whether Facebook will pass MySpace--or whether there are any trendy, fast-moving start-ups that you ought to be monitoring so that you can start up a profile and amass a healthy friends list before it gets too trendy.

Last month, ComScore released numbers pertaining to social networking's worldwide growth. Now, Nielsen/NetRatings' PR team has released its latest set of figures that track how quickly the top social-networking sites are growing. The results are divided into three different categories of social media: social … Read more