IT &Tech

Let me qualify this by saying, I'm NOT a biologist and I have only a scant understanding of the subject.

That said . . . WOW! This could be bigger than the Internet in terms of sheer impact on society.

I've spent a good chunk of the last week or two going over the explosion of research going on in and around microRNA and the technologies for suppressing (antagomirs) and activating certain forms of gene expression. I'm completely blown away. I think this may be the most important development in applicable biological understanding since penicillin (ok, a bad analogy - nevertheless, it's a major development). The mechanism was first identified in 1993 and has since been found to have a role in embryology, in some forms of cancer, is interfered with by viruses from HIV-1 to nearly all of the Herpes viruses and MAY even play an important role in aging and longevity (jury is still very much out on the aging question). Identifying this mechanism and having the tools to regulate it's function is (from my arm-chair position) an incredible achievement.

So so cool . . . okay, back to the IT stuff . . .

I had a version of Thunderbird (2.x) working perfectly wonderfully with Enigmail and GnuPG (2.0.1). Then I upgraded Thunderbird and Enigmail . . . ACK! Groan! @#%$!

All my wonderful encryption capabilities went away. I got this wonderful error message saying something about not being able to start gpg-agent. The culprit, not surprisingly, was my GnuPG install. Thunderbird expects to have access to gpg-agent and I hadn't configured it properly to work with the unique system that is OSX - not all too surprising as it's a bear to do. Here's how I fixed it:

(I've been meaning to post this for ages . . . apologies if it sounds old, it is.)

Internet regulatory policy that allows for vertically integrated "service" offerings based on QoS or QoS-like tiering is completely wrongheaded (I must sound like a broken record by now).

Some of the reasons are well known. Most obviously, tiering only makes financial sense to a small oligopoly of broadband providers who stand to profit from restraining broadband capacity, and the regulatory body that's laid claim to oversight (the FCC) of broadband has huge problems defining things like 'broadband' and 'competition' in terms that don't flagrantly and unjustly benefit the handful of incumbent providers. Their definition of broadband (200 Kbps) and the way they measure broadband penetration (by ZIP-CODE!?) are both woefully inadequate (at least according to the GAO); and if they actually applied sane measures of competition and concentration (like the HHI) they'd never have allowed the Terminator-esque merger-mania that's lead a return of Ma-Bell. The phenomenon of 'regulatory capture' is nearly synonymous with the FCC these days; despite the hard work of Commissioners Copps and Adelstein. But such arguments are well worn and well-known. They're arguments we're all familiar with by now (or at the very least ought to be) and they're very 'policy-minded'.

Instead of dwelling on these deficiencies of our regulatory system, I want to focus on a larger, more profound reason it's a mistake to allow such "tiered services." The reason I'm thinking of depends on basic understanding of what it is to "be digital" (apologies to Nicholas Negroponte). It is the not-so-simple observation that:

Computation IS Communication

The "services" model - the model we currently suffer - grossly fails to grasp what it is regulating. Here I need to make a point that cuts to the core of a number of issues that are being hotly debated - not least of which is the patentability of software, to which I'll return in another blog. The crucial point is that digital communications - as opposed to analogue communications - is by definition digital computation. I cannot emphasize the profound importance of this fact enough. It is the key to understanding why the BrandX decision was such a travesty and why the history of FCC regulatory intervention has been such a disaster. The insight is neither my opinion nor a veiled form of 'technological determinism', it is rather a FACT about any digital medium; it is a fact about "being digital".

Some legal thinkers and policy wonks have already touched on this aspect of "being digital", though haven't gleaned (or refuse to entertain) the full extent of it's impact. I'm thinking particularly of Jonathan Zittrain's influential article on "The Generative Internet" and Kevin Werbach's article, "The Federal Computer Commission" (North Carolina Law Review 84:1-75). Zittrain, on the one hand, argues that focusing on the end-to-end principle of digital networks is “myopic;” dangerously assuming the continued openness of the equipment attached at its ends. Werbach, on the other hand, argues that FCC regulation has in effect, if not in intent, already regulated the equipment at the ends of the network. At least, it’s done it more than most policy analysts would like to admit. I would contend that the breakdown at the ends of the digital network is actually more profound than either Zittrain or Werbach have entertained; that, in fact, regulation of digital communication IS regulation of computation, period. Put another way, the stuff going on at the "ends" of the network that Werbach and Zittrain are expressing concerns about IS EXACTLY what is going on in the network itself.

The basis for this claim comes straight from some very basic aspects of computation and the idea of 'computability' - the idea at the heart of ALL modern computers. The principle was set out by Turing (a response to Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem) in his paper, " "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." In the paper, Turing describes what has come to be called a Universal Turing Machine (UTM), an abstraction instantiated in the hardware and software of the modern computer. A UTM has a state that is altered by data/instructions it reads-from and writes-to some kind of storage medium. That is the full extent of a UTM's functionality, and it is this reading-from and writing-to storage that is both communication AND the very activity of computation. When Sun Microsystems CTO, Greg Popadopoulos, says, "The world needs only five computers . . . Google [for example] runs a computer [that] happens to have hundreds of thousands of processors in it, and millions of disk drives, but it's a computer. The important distinction is there is a point of control that determines what software is going to run, and then the systems work collectively to provide some service . . ." he is invoking this idea of computability that undergirds the very idea of the computer. An idea also at the heart of the company's slogan since its inception in the early nineteen-eighties, "The Network is the Computer."

Put simply, computation IS nothing more or less than the storage and retrieval of information (data); i.e. computation IS communication. The boundary drawn between the two is increasingly an artifice of political and legal definition rather than a practical and technologically determined (by analogue technologies) reality. Being digital means a near total breakdown of this boundary.

Artificial boundaries
Popadopoulos' comment demonstrates the arbitrariness of the boundaries regulators impose on the digital world. From a computational perspective, it matters little if the bits travel thousands of miles across national borders (as they might if you're participating in a distributed application like SETI@home) or on the same mother-board (as they might on a dual-processor-PC-under-your-desk@home), yet our regulatory framework is founded on imposing such arbitrary boundaries.

While motherboard-centric communications are free-flowing - with little or no filtering between CPU and storage - communications over broadband networks are (post-BrandX) subject to just about whatever limitations and crippling the telecommunications and cable companies wish to impose (in order to extract additional profits for absolutely no additional investment in infrastructure).

Motherboard manufacturers build products that meet inter-operating standards and compete on reliability and speed performance in a competitive market more-or-less free of regulatory intervention. Whereas, broadband access providers perpetuate last-mile scarcity in order to generate additional profits by crippling and limiting bandwidth to some customers in favor of others in a non-competitive market presided over by an oligopoly of telecommunications and cable companies.

While software programmers invest time and assets in development - relying on the communications between the local CPU and the local hard-drive - they cannot safely rely on the communications between the local CPU and a remote hard-drive.

If we are to reap the benefits of digitalization we must enact laws that reflect digital reality; this means a complete overhaul of communications regulation.

I can't help but feel we're on the verge of a revolution in user interfaces.

It's remarkable that the mouse, desktop and physical keyboard that emerged from PARC Xerox so many decades ago have survived as long as they have. But I'm starting to catch glimpses of something genuinely new.

It's a gestural, interpretive, and visually immersive experience that capitalizes on the semantic information made available by you and me. If you want to get a taste of it, just look at some of these technology demos (THEY'RE AMAZING):

Jeff Han's work on multi-touch-screen interaction

Blaise Aguera y Arcas' work on photosynth and seadragon (two techs recently bought by Microsoft's labs.live)

Then there's the new linux windows manager 'beryl' and compiz (this ain't your parent's desktop; in fact, it's clearly NOT a 'desktop' at all).

It all suggests something revolutionary; not the virtual reality that futurists were imagining in the 90s, but it's not unlike the immersive environment imagined by Gibson when he coined the term 'cyberspace.'

There's other tech out there, like organic LEDs and the deceptively mundane sounding ZFS filesystem, which will provide further support for this new vision (Apple's finally admitted it'll incorporate ZFS in OSX - eventually).

I don't know exactly what this all heralds . . . but I can tell you, it's going to be very, very, very cool . . . W2C4M.

Dell is going to offer the Ubuntu client on selected systems.

Oh yeah . . .

It's finally arrived!

I installed the second latest version of the Ubuntu client distro (Edgy Eft) on the crotchety old Dell GX100 that the Uni plopped in my office last week and . . . well, WOW! It's a knock-out. Not only is THIS version excellent, but the Ubuntu folks have just released the very latest (newer) version (Fiesty Fawn - I have no idea who names these versions, but they need help) a mere six months later with a lot of good under-the-hood improvements. Ubuntu is already easier to install than any version of Windows I've ever worked with and, frankly, it's got everything the average end-user or - perhaps more importantly - the average office worker could want or need; and the pace of development and release is such that I expect it to start extending it's lead in usability rapidly.

It's been a long time coming, but I believe this is the Linux distro that will start making inroads among the soccer-moms and average joe users. This may be the year Linux really starts moving onto the laptop (who cares about desktops anymore?).

Try it. It's a whole lot better than Vista.

The weight of network neutrality support is behind a definition of "network neutrality" that might lead to an escalation of end-user cryptographic use. This may or may not be a good thing.

The prevalent definition of "network neutrality" would allow for some forms of discrimination. This thin-edge-of -the-wedge - the proverbial "camel's nose" - would allow for discrimination where IP packets are part of a VoIP application's communication, an IPTV application's communication, etc.; i.e. discrimination for particular service types. In general, this "network neutrality" follows the path described by Lessig and Wu. The Dorgan-Snowe bill appears to takes this approach (12(a)(4) and 12(a)(5) are the relevant sections).

Sidenote: No one appears to take the testimony of Gary Bachula on the red-herringness of QoS seriously . . . Why? (more on this anon)

So, to adopt Wu's language, some discrimination is good, some bad (a sort-of affirmative action policy for the Internet?). What might such a policy beget?

Crystal ball time.

Here's a possible scenario. Recognizing that VoIP packets are prioritized over others, an enterprising software developer writes a bit of code to send ALL traffic as prioritized VoIP packets. Perhaps even sending some useless traffic on the "dirt-road" broadband to avoid attention. To avoid deep-packet inspection he may also encrypt the traffic and/or drop the relevant data (PDF) steganographically into something that genuinely looks like a voice conversation. The network operator will likely respond with more intrusive and sophisticated packet inspection.

A downside. The upshot of this oneupmanship would be an escalation of cryto-warfare that might ultimately prove more damaging to the efficient use of network bandwidth than implementing QoS enables.

An upside. The public might finally (and inadvertently) start adopting encryption tools on a massive scale, leading to greater privacy protections.

Akamai's Edgesuite product does not break network neutrality.

Apparently critics of network neutrality are still trotting out the argument that Akamai's Edgesuite product breaks network neutrality (most recently, Christopher Yoo raises the claim in a slashdotted interview; (NOTE: Since I originally posted this blog, the article has been substantially edited. Nevertheless, while not as strongly made, the Akamai point is still there) though he originally made the claim much earlier - it's also been raised at times by the likes of Adam Thierer and others). The claim Yoo et al. make is dangerous (I believe) because it relies on an idea of "network neutrality" that seems very much like what some proponents favor, but very unlike what other proponents (including me) argue for. In other words, it's an argument that threatens to divide network neutrality proponents.

Akamai's Edgesuite product can be summarized quite simply. Akamai has a global network of servers which mirror internet content (and dynamic services, it's not just static content - they do some very cool stuff). Edgesuite hosting then uses DNS resolution to direct requests for an online service (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc) to one of Akamai's "nearby" (this could be in terms of geography, network distance or even internet traffic patterns - I don't know exactly what they employ, but like I said, they do some pretty cool stuff) servers rather than have the request hump it's way across the globe to find the client's server. By using Akamai's Edgesuite product an Edgesuite client's web-content would then load more quickly than someone who didn't use it, simply because it wouldn't have to "travel as far". Yoo et al. suggest this breaks network neutrality because it enables content or a service provided online to respond more quickly and reliably by purchasing Edgesuite, thus breaking the "level playing-field" that (according to some proponents) network neutrality is supposed to protect.

Yoo et al. (and even some network neutrality proponents) have an unfortunately misguided idea of how network neutrality ought to be understood. The basic idea is captured in a famous (and famously misunderstood) paper by Saltzer, Clark and Reed in which they present the end-to-end principle. The end-to-end principle basically says, if you CAN put functionality at the END of a communication rather than IN the communications medium, then you SHOULD put the functionality at the end. The idea is more or less synonymous with the idea of a "dumb network". What Yoo et al. (and the majority in the Brand-X decision - I still can't believe it) don't seem to understand is that DNS is an example of EXACTLY this principle; i.e DNS is the implementation of a service that sits at the END of the communication and is NOT a part of the communication medium. If you're having trouble understanding this (as Yoo and 6 out of 9 supreme court justices do), pull out your handy-dandy OSI network layers chart and figure out where to place DNS; hint: "applications layer". Network neutrality is NOT about (or at least ought not be about) regulating the applications layer, it's about ensuring the end-to-end principle so that companies like Akamai can innovate at the ends of the network. Far from being an example of breaking network neutrality, Akamai services like Edgesuite are (yet another) example of the kind of innovative application that a neutral network ENABLES!

Richard Whitt, Kevin Werbach and others have proposed regulatory reform based on the network layers model and, in general, it's the best basis for reform I've seen so far. Hopefully the new congress will take their suggestions seriously. I'm open to alternatives, but given the history of our (information and telecommunications) "services" based regime, I think embarking on another definitionally squishy "services" regime where IPTV services, VoIP services and Broadband services dissolve into a litigated mush of regulatory ambiguity is a particularly bad idea.

On that note . . . I hope to blog on FCC approval of the AT&T/BellSouth merger next.

It's a commodity business.

No matter how incumbent providers try to steer the issue and put lipstick on their digital-porkbellies - "triple play", "video services", "voice services", etc. - it cannot change the fact that what they do is move IP packets from point A to point B (Eli Noam is simply wrong on this, a bit really is a bit).

What's disappointing is that the FCC is the major cosmetics supplier to the digital-porkbelly lipstick market and - Chevron aside - 6 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices are so impressed with the make-up job, they fail to recognize that what they're looking at is in fact merely the digital equivalent of porkbellies.

At some point US regulators are going to have to come to grips with this fact (to use J. Scalia's terminology) and re-assess their "services" based regulatory regime, which simply doesn't apply to a digital communications framework. Unfortunately, by the time we get around to correcting our misguided regulatory regime, it'll be too late. The rest of the world are moving to a utilities-like model (paying for broadband much as we pay for water or electricity), while US consumers continue to pay obscene fees for the digital equivalent of "shower services", "toilet services", and "kitchen-sink services" (instead of paying the digital water utility bill).

Like climate change, we're in a race against time; i.e. the rest of the world are not merely "catching-up", they've set a pace to outstrip the US in broadband penetration - and MANY ALREADY HAVE! Future generations in the US will curse us for our myopic outlook and protection of incumbent industries that weren't agile enough (or patriotic enough) to adapt their creaking business models to the realities - facts - of a digital world.

Call me a pessimist, but it's already too late to offset the damage our regulatory myopia has done thus far . . . the real question is, HOW BAD WILL IT GET BEFORE WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

I think Larry blew it in his senate commerce committee testimony on tiered internet services. First, he makes a bizarre distinction - which I'm still having trouble coming to terms with - between the "consumer" end of a communication and the "content" end. Surely L.L. (I still have this image of Larry listening to "mamma said knock you out" before arguing Eldred - is it just me?) knows that this is a distinction that loses more credibility on the net by the day. Sure, in a world of dynamically assigned IP's on low asymmetric-bandwidth connections the ability for Joe User to be a "content" provider is slim, but as bandwidth becomes cheaper, IPv6 rolls out (is this actually going to happen?), etc. I think it's clear that the line between "content" and "consumer" will blur . . . big time. But L.L. makes this distinction pivotal in his testimony, arguing that it's okay to offer tiered access to the "consumer" but not okay to offer it to the "content" provider. Though he makes this argument on the grounds of competition, it's merely befudling in the context of end-to-end network neutrality.

Privileging one end of the end-to-end network is not the biggest error in Larry's testimony however. L.L. makes a far more dangerous and egregious claim near the end of his testimony:

At a minimum, Congress could simply restrict access-tiering by
network providers. That would leave network providers free to offer
consumer-tiered service. But such tiering should not be allowed to
turn upon the particular provider of network content. Instead, such
tiering should be limited to either bandwidth guarantees (e.g.,
guaranteeing at least 10 Mbps) or service guarantees (e.g.,
guaranteeing fast ‘video service’ without specifying a particular
provider).

There's a huge difference between limiting by "bandwidth" and limiting by "service." The latter effectively requires some form of packet inspection, to enable the network provider to distinguish between video, email, file transfer or whathaveyou - a QoS or ToS header is ultimately nothing more than a way of peering up ISO layers - and that alone violates the principle of network neutrality. To make a really gross analogy, it's effectively the difference between allowing the post-office (FedEx, take your pick) to open up your mail and ship it based on what's inside the package on the one hand, and forcing them to ship the package without opening it - based on the level of service you've bought - on the other. Network neutrality is founded on the principle that you don't open packages (packets). Larry's proposal breaks that principle (whether it's on the "consumer" end or the "content" end is ultimately irrelevant).

This approach is would be like mana from heaven for those that would like to see fixed-line services become spectrum-like channelized services. What's L.L. thinking? Surely he's thought about this issue more than I have . . . so, what am I missing here?