The promises of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other advancing technologies sound like magic. However, even magic is subject to the laws of economics. And even quantum computers are “legal things…technological tools that are bound to affect our lives in a tangible manner,” as Valentin Jeutner explains in The Quantum Imperative: Addressing the Legal Dimension of Quantum Computers. Analogous to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, Professor Jeutner proposes a three-part “quantum imperative,” which “provides that regulators and developers must ensure that the development of quantum computers. more
Wait and see approach on abuse attracts ICANN Stakeholder attention: A few weeks ago I made a detailed argument as to why product safety applies to domains, just like it does to cars and high chairs. I also argued that good products equal good business or "economically advantaged" in the long run. Then I really made a strong statement, I said if we don't actively engage other Internet stakeholders -- those that interact with our products, we would eventually lose the opportunity to self-regulate. more
It's Friday, a day to tie some threads together. There were three announcements/events this week that are connected in a non-obvious way... These three elements go together in creating a picture of US policy towards Internet access at the beginning of 2008. Rather than seeing the Internet as an engine for economic growth, creativity, innovation, and new jobs -- and as the converged communications medium for the next generation -- current policy is to wait for private companies to decide when investment in access makes sense for them. Those private companies have plenty of incentives to shape access to suit their own business plans. more
In yet another committee meeting among the many over the past thirty years, the ITU-T is holding a Review Committee session in Geneva in two weeks in an attempt to save the organization. There aren't many people left these days interested in these noble efforts - largely from the only two remaining entities who participate significantly - Korea's government ETRI institute, and entities clustered around China's MIIT ministry. As someone who has participated in and written about the organization over the past forty years in many different capacities, I have some suggestions - in the spirit of recognizing that there is still something worth saving. more
A recent televised roundtable enumerated advances in the computerization of Cuban society, including: Telephone density is 58% with 6.5 million accounts, 5.2 million of which are cell phones. 1.5 million people access Nauta mail with cell phones. Over 1.7 million have permanent accounts. There are 1,713 public-access spots: 709 WiFi locations, over 700 at ETECSA premises and the same number in third-party locations (but 709+1400 is 2109, not 1,713). more
On March 1, I wrote that a small number of SpaceX Starlink terminals had arrived in Ukraine, and they would be an important asset for distribution to selected government and resistance leaders and journalists. I didn't know who would get the terminals or how many there were, but it was a single truckload. A week or so later, we learned that two more shipments of terminals had arrived and fifty of them went to DTEK, a company struggling to repair Ukrainian electrical infrastructure. more
This year marked the 10th anniversary of collecting statistics for IPv6 from the Christmas Goat. It's the third year now with almost no snow, and with this crazy winters and climate, it's hard to get any good photos of the goat. The photo is only from 3–4 days in early December with little snow so far in Gävle.The measurements this year started very low with 20% IPv6, but it made some improvements and landed just like 2018 at a total of 41%. more
I don't (and probably won't) have anything substantive to say about the technical details of the just-announced Meltdown and Spectre attacks. What I do want to stress is that these show, yet again, that security is a systems property: being secure requires that every component, including ones you've never heard of, be secure. These attacks depend on hardware features... and no, many computer programmers don't know what those are, either. more
Announcement of the Verizon Wireless (VZW) iPhone and last week's announcements of Androids for AT&T mean that we're going to have better mobile data networks at lower prices. That's the most important consequence of being able to choose your phone and your network separately. We in North America have a long way to go to have the mix and match choices of phones and service that most of the world has... more
The UK's regulator has undertaken much commendable work in recent years, which has helped to establish the country's telecom sector as one of the most competitive and vibrant in the world. The regulator stood up to BT's intransigence in the early days of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), enforcing the creation of BT Openreach in January 2006 to operate as the company's wholesale division. The results have been very impressive... more
Sometimes I hear people or read writers that say things about spam that are incorrect. I thought I would clear those up in this blog post... When the holidays roll around, people start warning other people to watch their inboxes - December is spam season! By that, they mean that more spam than normal flows around the Internet. People say this because December is the holiday season. Since spam is another form of advertising, and advertisers pepper us with ads during this time, then spammers must do the same. It makes sense except it's not true. more
Why do we run content filters at the recipient's side? Paul Graham's Plan for Spam introduced them that way. After several years, we can say that plan doesn't work very well. Email has become much less reliable. One way to recover reliability, at least between trusted parties, is to run filters at the sender's side. Let's look at the diagram in more detail... more
There is a difference, of course, between asserting a claim that cannot possibly succeed in an administrative proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and being unprepared to prove a claim that may have merit with the right evidence. Still, there is also an overlapping similarity in that complainants are either shockingly unfamiliar with UDRP procedures and jurisprudence... more
A Twitter thread on trolls brought up mention of trolls on Usenet. The reason they were so hard to deal with, even then, has some lessons for today; besides, the history is interesting. (Aside: this is, I think, the first longish thing I've ever written about any of the early design decisions for Usenet. I should note that this is entirely my writing, and memory can play many tricks across nearly 40 years.) more
Today, June 26, is the final day that you can help the Internet Society with its "Future of the Internet" survey. It takes about 20-25 minutes and will help my colleagues at the Internet Society develop a number of scenarios about the possible future of the Internet. These scenarios can help all of us in talking to policy makers, leaders, media and the general user population about the choices we have before us for the future of the Internet. more
Sponsored byCSC
Sponsored byVerisign
Sponsored byRadix
Sponsored byIPv4.Global
Sponsored byWhoisXML API
Sponsored byVerisign
Sponsored byDNIB.com
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.