Tag: net neutrality

  • Spontaneous human combustion: Skype to blame

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    A Voice over IP service was to blame for a man in Massachusetts bursting into flames at the weekend. The man, David Reed, held an executive position at Lotus in the early 1980s, and was a Fellow at HP Labs. He is said to be recovering from the spontaneous human combustion at MIT Media Lab,…

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  • Google – this internet won’t scale

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    Google’s TV chief has admitted the internet is crap for TV. Speaking to the Cable Europe Congress in Amsterdam, Vincent Dureau told attendees: “The web infrastructure, and even Google’s [infrastructure]…doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect.” Dureau, is head of TV technology at the ad giant. He candidly…

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  • Robert Kahn on Net Neutrality

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    Robert Kahn, the most senior figure in the development of the internet, has delivered a strong warning against “Net Neutrality” legislation. Speaking to an audience at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California at an event held in his honour, Kahn warned against legislation that inhibited experimentation and innovation where it was needed. Kahn…

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  • How AT&T chewed up, and spat out Net Neutrality

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    “It sure would be nice, but it doesn’t have much chance of happening because of market power, size, etc. I think it would be real hard to do. I don’t think the regulators would let that happen, in my judgment.” – Ed Whitacre on the possibility of taking over BellSouth, 2005. The definition of a…

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  • Old net geezers play trip-you-up

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    The rolling net “neutrality” debate brought two of the internet’s most distinguished elder statesmen together in mortal combat this week. The two gentlemen, Vint Cerf and Dave Farber, said they agreed on most things. But where they didn’t, they tried to pull the chair away just as their opponent tried to sit down.… Read More

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  • The New Paranoid style in American politics

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    The most interesting thing to emerge from the so-called ‘Net Neutrality’ bid had nothing to do with telecomms technology or policy. It’s the startling and, at the same time, banal fact that paranoia has become the default flavour of politics on the net. Phantoms fight phantoms, here. When the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote his famous…

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