Author: RB

That’s nuts

Forbes writer Stephen Manes isn’t impressed with Larry Lessig’s new book: The intellectual property issue of our time is how to balance the rights of creators and consumers. Don’t look to Lessig for that balance. First he reasonably extols “‘Walt Disney creativity’–a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and … Continue reading “That’s nuts”

Forbes writer Stephen Manes isn’t impressed with Larry Lessig’s new book:

The intellectual property issue of our time is how to balance the rights of creators and consumers.

Don’t look to Lessig for that balance. First he reasonably extols “‘Walt Disney creativity’–a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different.” But then, in a rhetorical bait-and-switch, he spends most of the book making the case that a free pass should be given to the specific kind of “creativity” that directly reuses existing work, up to and including wholesale sampling and so-called sharing.

That’s nuts.

Link via Lessig’s blog.

Fixing the Internet

Dean mentions a new, experimental protocol that eases some of TCP’s performance bottlenecks: Binary Increase Congestion Control for Fast, Long-Distance Networks Authors: Lisong Xu, Khaled Harfoush and Injong Rhee, North Carolina State University Presented: March 11, 2004, at Infocom 2004 Abstract: High-speed networks with large delays present a unique environment where TCP may have a … Continue reading “Fixing the Internet”

Dean mentions a new, experimental protocol that eases some of TCP’s performance bottlenecks:

Binary Increase Congestion Control for Fast, Long-Distance Networks
Authors: Lisong Xu, Khaled Harfoush and Injong Rhee, North Carolina State University
Presented: March 11, 2004, at Infocom 2004

Abstract: High-speed networks with large delays present a unique environment where TCP may have a problem utilizing the full bandwidth. Several congestion control proposals have been suggested to remedy this problem. The protocols consider mainly two properties: TCP friendliness and bandwidth scalability. That is, a protocol should not take away too much bandwidth from TCP while utilizing the full bandwidth of high-speed networks. This paper presents another important constraint, namely RTT (round trip time) unfairness where competing flows with different RTTs may consume vastly unfair bandwidth shares. Existing schemes have a severe RTT unfairness problem because the window increase rate gets larger as the window grows — ironically the very reason that makes them more scalable. RTT unfairness for high-speed networks occurs distinctly with drop tail routers where packet loss can be highly synchronized. After recognizing the RTT unfairness problem of existing protocols, this paper presents a new congestion control protocol that ensures linear RTT fairness under large windows while offering both scalability and TCP-friendliness. The protocol combines two schemes called additive increase and binary search increase. When the congestion window is large, additive increase with a large increment ensures linear RTT fairness as well as good scalability. Under small congestion windows, binary search increase is designed to provide TCP friendliness. The paper presents a performance study of the new protocol.

It sounds like this protocol would be primarily useful for satellite networks (large delays) and for multi-hop paths in wired networks. While TCP’s metrics aren’t tuned to these networks, I don’t think they’re common enough to warrant wholesale replacement of TCP, although the metrics it uses to figure out how much data can be in the pipe without an acknowledgement certainly need some re-examination given the nature of today’s networks.

Kerry’s post-Vietnam antics

So now it turns out that our favorite Vietnam war hero has been lying about his involvement in a plot to assassinate US senators in 1971: Kerry said he hasn’t spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author … Continue reading “Kerry’s post-Vietnam antics”

So now it turns out that our favorite Vietnam war hero has been lying about his involvement in a plot to assassinate US senators in 1971:

Kerry said he hasn’t spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author Gerald Nicosia, that assertion is wrong. So is Kerry’s insistence that he did not attend a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), at which group members discussed the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who were still supporting the war in Vietnam, Nicosia said.

And of course Kerry didn’t rat out his assassin buddies. Sounds worse than a war crime to me.

Link via Protein Wisdom (click through).

One year on

If you haven’t seen Mark Steyn’s One Year On article, go check it out. He compares his predictions from a year ago with those of the Progressives, ending with this: ONE YEAR ON: Iraq’s provisional constitution is the most progressive in the Arab world. Business is booming. Oil production is up. The historic marshlands of … Continue reading “One year on”

If you haven’t seen Mark Steyn’s One Year On article, go check it out. He compares his predictions from a year ago with those of the Progressives, ending with this:

ONE YEAR ON: Iraq’s provisional constitution is the most progressive in the Arab world. Business is booming. Oil production is up. The historic marshlands of southern Iraq, environmentally devastated by Saddam, are being restored. In February, attacks on coalition forces fell to the lowest level since the liberation. Attacks on the oil pipelines have fallen by 75% since the autumn. In a BBC poll, some 60% of Iraqis say their lives are much better or somewhat better than a year ago; under 20% say they’re worse. Seventy per cent expect their lives to be better still a year from now, and only five per cent say worse. Eighty per cent of the country is pleasant and civilised, and the Sunni Triangle will follow. Not a bad year’s work.

That’s what we call a Happy Ending.

Follow the money

Want to know who your neighbors support for president? Go to Neighbor Search and find out who’s given what to whom. This is a great little tool, by gum.

Want to know who your neighbors support for president? Go to Neighbor Search and find out who’s given what to whom. This is a great little tool, by gum.

Go buy one of these

I know everybody with a blog is supposed to love laptops and Treos, but to me the ultimate toy would be a battery-powered portable TV set that talks to its Tivo over Wi-Fi. So here it is: Once everything is hooked up, the wireless Aquos performs beautifully. The picture is bright and clear from all … Continue reading “Go buy one of these”

I know everybody with a blog is supposed to love laptops and Treos, but to me the ultimate toy would be a battery-powered portable TV set that talks to its Tivo over Wi-Fi. So here it is:

Once everything is hooked up, the wireless Aquos performs beautifully. The picture is bright and clear from all angles, the stereo sound from Mickey’s ears is very good for a 15-inch screen, and the screen’s own remote control is nicely designed. The reaction from visitors is a nice perk, too, as long as your floors aren’t easily dented by dropped jaws. Few have ever seen a futuristic-looking flat screen drawing both video and power from invisible sources.

So quit screwing around and go buy one already, it’s historic.

Link via WiFi Networking.

The pain in Spain

Tom Friedman gets Spain right in today’s column: I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear … Continue reading “The pain in Spain”

Tom Friedman gets Spain right in today’s column:

I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis’ attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.

My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the U.N.’s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq’s first democratic election.

The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda’s onslaught on Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill’s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Right on, dude.

Not completely insane

Just catching up a bit, I’d like to point out that Lessig’s candidate Rohit Khanna made a spectacularly poor showing in his attempt to unseat pro-Iraq-liberation incumbent Tom Lantos in San Mateo County (just south of Frisco.) Khanna touted his anti-liberation and anti-PATRIOT Act stances, and was beaten like a red-headed stepchild on election day. … Continue reading “Not completely insane”

Just catching up a bit, I’d like to point out that Lessig’s candidate Rohit Khanna made a spectacularly poor showing in his attempt to unseat pro-Iraq-liberation incumbent Tom Lantos in San Mateo County (just south of Frisco.) Khanna touted his anti-liberation and anti-PATRIOT Act stances, and was beaten like a red-headed stepchild on election day. San Mateo County voters aren’t as shallow as they sometimes look.

In a similar vein, Jean Kerry’s plea to Zapatero not to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq was very, very, smart – it allows Kerry to continue pretending to be serious about American defense while continuing to offer-up Zap as the one foreign leader (other than Osama) known to support Jean for the presidency. And yes, we prefer to spell Kerry’s name in the Original French.

Important new technology

I haven’t been writing about technology lately because I don’t want to give away what I’m working on. But this article is worthy of comment because it relates to a watershed moment in networking. The MBOA, a consortium of 80+ networking and consumer electronics companies, has agreed to a baseline standard for a new protocol … Continue reading “Important new technology”

I haven’t been writing about technology lately because I don’t want to give away what I’m working on. But this article is worthy of comment because it relates to a watershed moment in networking. The MBOA, a consortium of 80+ networking and consumer electronics companies, has agreed to a baseline standard for a new protocol that combines prioritized asynchronous and isochronous access into a single system that operates without a centralized controller:

A key requirement for the MAC is decentralization, along with the notion that every node will announce its connections and with whom its exchanging data. “So every node is fully aware of what’s going on with every other node in the network, which will reduce reconnect time and latencies,” said Kimyacioglu.

To put that in layman’s terms, real-time applications like voice and video can run on this network as well as they would on a dedicated, wired system, sharing the network with Internet access. While it doesn’t correct the design deficiencies in the Internet, it points the way to the resolution of these problems in the future. I was very happy to contribute to this effort, which reminded me of a similar gathering in the same town (Phoenix) exactly 20 years ago that created twisted-pair Ethernet. This new MBOA system could very easily be just as successful.

Some commenters are confused about what’s going on with UWB, thinking there’s a real conflict between MBOA and Motorola. There’s really not a fight here, because it’s 80 companies against 1, and the outcome at the consumer level is perfectly clear.

UPDATE: Glenn Fleishman believes Moto may try and fight a battle with MBOA over intellectual property to create confusion in the consumer market. Given the advantage that MBOA has over them, I suspect MBOA’s response to that threat would be something in the nature of “bring it on.”

Victory for terrorists in Spain

While we’re all preoccupied with gay marriage and potty-mouthed radio shows, the Spaniards have had to confront terror attacks. Unfortunately, they failed to make a serious response, as you can see by reading Iberian Notes on Sunday’s election. Don Quixote, your people need you.

While we’re all preoccupied with gay marriage and potty-mouthed radio shows, the Spaniards have had to confront terror attacks. Unfortunately, they failed to make a serious response, as you can see by reading Iberian Notes on Sunday’s election.

Don Quixote, your people need you.