I Am Not and Never Have Been a Hippie (Except 1968-1976 and weekends through the early ’00s)
Eric‘s posted more in his on-line writing project. It’s damn fun watching his essay evolve.
And now for my daily quibble with it. He writes that in our previous blog entries Akma and I point
toward the inefficiency of the Net not being a bad thing.” He replies: “I don’t think it is either, from the humanities perspective.” So let me be clearer: I am not presenting a hippie point of view when I say that the Net’s inefficiency at the packet level is the source of its strength. It has nothing to do with “bits just wanna be free, man.” It has everything to do with measurable, quantifiable decisions about how to build a network that is robust and insanely scalable. So don’t go tarring me with that hippie brush, man. Now, where’d I put my bong?
And how does this apply to economics? I don’t know nothing about economics, nevertheless the point I was trying to make was that the Internet’s greatest economic strength – and its strength in building markets – has been in ventures that are bottom-up, do the job well enough, and are highly specific to a problem. Many of the attempts to impose digital IDs fail all three criteria.
I agree with that old hippie, Akma:
But this returns me to my perpetual refrain that we need a new business model, not a new way of enforcing the old. RIAA and Hollywood might like to use DigID to ensure that one and only one person has the right to listen to my copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—but if DigID is going to function as a weapon for enforcing the perpetuation of an obsolescent business model, than we’re much better off without it. Kevin knows this, and is touting Mediagora
And while I doth protest too much about not being a hippie, here’s a comment from Aaron Kinney’s year-end round-up of TV for Salon (for-pay edition).
… reminded us that television is the best medium for disseminating propaganda, as it served as the premiere for the Bush administration’s ad campaign claiming that anyone who purchases marijuana may be financing terrorists. I humbly submit that, rather than shifting blame for mass killing and a national security fiasco onto recreational pot smokers, the administration should maybe shut the fuck up and think about tracking down Osama bin Laden.
Don’t bogart that cultural revolution, muh friend.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I’m still convinced that the more obvious message of the drugs = terrorism campaign is accidentally identical to the Bushies’ argument for more domestic fuel production, a la Alaskan drilling. You know: instead of buying your dime bag via the bottom end of an anonymous supply chain climbing up to Osama bin Laden, grow it domestically in your victory herb garden.
Though I hope I don’t end up trying that defense out in court.
“Salvia divinorum is an extraordinary herb used in shamanism, divination, healing, meditation, and the exploration of consciousness.”
What does this have to do with the net? Very little, but I was reminded of my single foray into the smokage of dried banana peels in 1967. Won’t get fooled again.
We’ve been growing salvia for years and little did we know that it could be smoked. Of course salmon is also often smoked.
The inefficiency of the net is not a bad thing unless you need your data. Then it could be seen as a less than good thing. Did anybody see that last packet I misplaced somewhere? Oh well… I suppose I’ll get a request to retransmit if it was really important; and, if it was critical to a sequenced real time digital transmission of high fidelity sound or image then I suppose I shoulda been using a leased circuit anyway.
Other than that, I don’t know what you all are smoking, but every summer I declare anew my war on bugs. Yours for a mosquito free environment.
1. Banana peels (the strings, actually) may not have worked, but I have a close acquaintance who went to the hospital because of a bad trip/poisoning from ingesting nutmeg.
2. I hesitate to get into a Quality of Service debate with you, Frank, esp. since I’m certain to lose. But the argument I’ve heard (and currently believe) is that opening up bandwidth is the right way to address the QoS concerns. But what the hell do I know? I haven’t been quite right since my friend’s nutmeg incident.
You are of course too modest David. I am no more than a coyote hunting dilletante, more opinionated than informed. Nevertheless, in the spirit of a seeker, from time to time I will read an article like this one from Indira Gandhi National Open University… (beware the annoying Gator load opportunity).
Upon refreshing my understanding of connectionless and connection-oriented protocols, I am reminded of the marvelous engines that have powered our packet network systems since the days of Tymnet and their “golden needle” in the pre- X.25 world.
Recently, for the last 10 or 15 years, we have been blessed with wide open Internet access for the masses: standards based, sufficient for lossy xmission of audio and video, bandwidth somehow always keeping up with demand, and routing protocols somehow always sufficient. And amongst all the loosely coupled end points, we have routers that respond to network management needs that are out-of-band and able to handle least cost path selection, avoid noisy segments, and so forth. (continued…)
(…continued, while I searched for a missing pointy bracket)
The main QoS Request for Comments (RFC 2990) was candid in acknowledging the issues that trouble us in the loosely joined, simpler is better world of interworking. As a simple coyote hunter however, I am baffled by the concern that many people have about turning on one more feature in our already amazingly magical electronic componentry.
I recommend RFC 2990 and the other RFCs it references to insomniacs and to just about anyone else who, like me, identifies with the phrase: “needs to get a life.” What’s cool about this RFC is the distinction it establishes between a “Differentiated Services Architecture” and an “Integrated Services Architecture.”
Frank, QoS does suck and is a bad idea.
If you want high fidelity, buffer. TCP beats UDP for quality every time, and I say that as someone who implemented a live broadcast system over UDP.
Someday I’ll get round to writing up the five things everyone knows about streaming media that are dead wrong, but in the meantime I’ll point you to Stuart Cheshire’s classic essay on QoS-related issues
Or his shorter paradox:
ATM’s big feature is guaranteed quality of service. When you set up a TCP/IP connection, the Internet does not reserve network bandwidth for you to guarantee that your data will not suffer network congestion or loss. ATM does offer guaranteed reserved bandwidth. This is its big advantage.
Or is it? If you reserve bandwidth for one user, then you have to refuse to let anyone else use that bandwidth. Everyone always talks about reservations in the context that you are the one who gets the bandwidth and it is everyone who is refused. What about when you are the one being refused? Reservations suddenly doesn’t seem so wonderful any more, do they? The only way to make sure no one is refused service is to engineer your network so that you have enough bandwidth for everyone — but if you have enough for everyone then why do they have to keep making reservations? That’s the ATM paradox.
I hesitate to point Kevin and Frank at my own attempt to understand the QoS issue. Be gentle!
Darwin Online column