Not a good advertisement for the cloud

by francesco sgroi

Guardian: U.S. politicians told Amazon to remove Wikileaks
[Via Boing Boing]

When Wikileaks twittered that Amazon’s removal of its website from its servers was a “free speech” issue, it seemed an odd turn of phrase: after all, Amazon is a private company and is free to host what it likes. The Guardian has just reported, however, that it did indeed remove Wikileaks after being pressured to do so by the U.S. government.

Ewan MacAskill writes that U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman offered a prepared statement, announcing Wikileaks’ removal from Amazon’s server, as the plug was pulled.

The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure.

…

“[Amazon's] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material,” [Lieberman] said.

“I call on any other company or organisation that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.”

The department of homeland security confirmed Amazon’s move, referring journalists to Lieberman’s statement.

Funny how Amazon spent days loudly refusing to delete a pedophile guidebook on free speech grounds, but this happened behind the scenes and the company is refusing to comment. Must be the Joementum.

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While Amazon is free to do business with whomever it choses, it does demonstrate the difficulty of any organization working with a cloud provider. A business’s access can be cut off at the touch of a button or the hint of pressure. If the business happens to be something a politician does not like – perhaps because it competes with a large donor of theirs – pressure can be brought to bear. Amazon has just shown itself susceptible to this sort of pressure.

It did not make this decision because it had some code of ethics by which it decides who to do business with, a code that Wikileaks violated. It made the decision purely because of political pressure.

Wikileaks has not been shown to have done anything illegal. It is simply doing things that present the government in a bad light. I’d rather give my business to someone who does not make decisions based on political popularity issues.

Not only painful to watch but mind boggling that he holds a position of power

by cogdogblog

Anderson Cooper humiliates a willfully ignorant Texas birther
[Via Boing Boing]

Texas State Rep. Leo Berman’s brain has been replaced by a ROM chip. As you can see in this video, it works pretty well, but the technology isn’t quite ready for prime time.

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His inability to recognize facts, to fall back on easily debunked fairy tales and to simply ignore reality would make one wonder about his sanity, if he was just a 75 year old man. But he is a state representative, submitting bills that affect the lives of many citizens.

One commenter asked “So how do you argue with people who refuse to acknowledge evidence?” Logic and rationality do not work, as evidenced by Anderson Cooper’s very patient work.

How about this?

If I may say so, Herr Berman claims he was born in 1935 in New York City. At that time there was an ascendant Nazi party in Germany that was slowly sending spies into large world powers, including the United States, and it’s been documented several times that Nazi spies landed on Long Island and worked in NYC.

Now, Herr Berman, where is our definitive proof that you are not the children of sleeper Nazi agents? How do we know that you have not been working this whole time for the Third Reich? I would like proof now before we can let you back into office.

Thanks.

But, unfortunately, most people are sane and could not carry through that charade with a straight face.

It does make one wonder why he was never worried about this sort of evidence for any previous President. He’s been able to vote for every President since Eisenhower (who apparently had no contemporaneous birth certificate at all). Only this President. Strange.

Here is what happens when an ISP is also a provider of competitive services

by billjacobus1

Feature: How Comcast became a toll-collecting, nuke-wielding hydra
[Via Ars Technica]

Wharton Business School professor Kevin Werbach dubs Comcast’s actions this week a “turning point in US Internet policy.” Law professor Susan Crawford calls Comcast a terrifying, hat-wearing hydra—and she’s looking for a Hercules to cut it down to size. Harold Feld of Public Knowledge says that Comcast has set up a new “toll booth” on the ‘Net and is now operating like Ed “use my pipes free” Whitacre. And broadband analyst Dave Burstein says Comcast has just deployed “the nuclear option.”

Just what is going on here, why does it matter, and why is Comcast calling backbone operator Level 3 a big fat liar for starting the whole debate?

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Building bridges to allow people to reach other locations costs money. But being the ogre who collects tolls to cross the bridge makes money. Comcast seems to be more content with taking tolls rather than building bridges.

Comcast not only provides Internet access but also content. The lack of competition for Internet access (we get it through the cable to the phone company) means that it can require added fees from others who provide content, especially ones that compete with it. It can restrict users choices and harm innovative approaches, all while it makes itself richer.

This lack of respect for its own customers and their wishes, while seeking to simply increase its own wealth, is the hallmark of many companies today. It is, in my opinion, a self-defeating process. Netflix can provide me with the content I want to see for much less than Comcast charges. But Comcast will not find ways to become competitive in the business arena. It will use its leverage in another area to hamstring Netflix.

We all lose and Comcast gets richer.

The US is way behind other countries because of the lack of competition. There are 19 countries that have higher penetration of broadband than we do. But that does not tell the whole story. Their broadband is faster and cheaper than ours.

As an example, France has at least 7 different companies vying for the access to a user’s home. It can cost about $40 a month to get unlimited phone, over 150 video channels and internet speeds of at least 20 megabits per second. In the US, Comcast would charge well over $130 a month for a similar package but with internet speeds half as fast.

Three times the cost for half the speed. Cable can’t compete with fiber, which can permit huge download speeds, perhaps 100 time faster than cable. Luckily for Comcast, the penetration of fiber in the US is much lower than elsewhere (eg Europe has twice as many subscribers using fiber than in the US).

But the world does not rest, even for companies that try and take the easy route of being the tollbooth rather than the bridge builder. Google is looking to create a high speed fiber network. A speed of 1 gigibits per second. An open network. And no need to shore up its failing cable business by extracting tolls.

Google may not be a real white knight but nothing improves things for the customer than competition. And Comcast has not shown itself adaptable to real competition.

With WhiteFi around the corner, the ability of Comcast to act as a toll booth because it controls access to the Internet will be greatly reduced.

Windows Phone 7 developers fear platform flop

Windows Phone 7 developers fear platform flop
[Via AppleInsider]

Despite a reportedly healthy level of interest from developers, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 debut appears to have flopped with consumers, leaving developers cautious about investing in the platform.



On top of dead launch events reminiscent of the failed Microsoft KIN (which essentially ran an early, limited version of the WP7 platform) and poor unofficial sales reports, an apparent gag on app analytics is preventing developers from seeing how many of their apps have actually sold. Microsoft is reportedly also withholding any payments to its app developers through February 2011.

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Not letting developers see any numbers, such as how many of their apps were sold, and then not paying out any money for those sales for several months does not sound like a winning combination.

It reeks of a poorly thought out strategy that is mainly concerned with looking like what Apple does without actually understanding why Apple does it.

Tom Tomorrow examines bipartisanship

It’s funny because it’s true. I love how the liberal is to worried about trying to make friends. Who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result? He won the Nobel Prize, wrote a famous letter to the President and had all sorts of wild theories. He might even be accused of being a liberal so he would have first hand knowledge of the abilities of the Democratic Party.

Of course, Will Rogers famously said: “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.” The Jon Stewart of his time who, as Stewart also does, recognized an important fact: “There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don’t even have to exaggerate.”