Michael N. Dundas

Kenneth David (@kennethdavid) responded to a post I wrote entitled “Google, Verizon and the creation of private networks”.  My post original post is here, and Kenneth’s response is here.  I have never met Kenneth, but I follow him on twitter as he provides informative tweets.  We have common friends too.  He actually works for a friend of mine.

Kenneth in his response suggested that using a highway is a better analogy to how bandwidth is used than electricity.  I completely agree with him.  I have used both analogies many times to explain bandwidth.  For me I have found that electricity seems to work better.  Maybe because it is is similar in the sense that you get a monthly bill, you are billed typically in a unit/time type of format.  It comes into your home.  So while I agree that a highway analogy is in fact more similar to bandwidth usage, using it as an analogy to explain bandwidth to my wife’s step-dad, just gets him confused and he misses the point that I am trying to actually get across.  Kenneth also introduced 3 elements that he discussed:

Mobile bandwidth is not unlimited. No resource  is unlimited, however it is true that mobile has some unique characteristics in this regard.  That being said, data to support the claims comes from the service providers themselves.  We have to assume they are being honest.  If you have done any statistics you realize that data can be manipulated or interpreted to their advantage.  How do we know they are not doing that?  I know people and companies that are hired to do exactly this.

Bandwidth is a resource that is shared. Very true statement, just like the highway, electricity, gas, air etc. most resources are shared.  There is a lot of debate as to how much bandwidth their really is, how much their could be, the cost associated with increasing bandwidth and who should bear that.

Mobile or wireless introduces a little more complexity on the consumer end.  It uses radio  frequencies which have to be shared amongst the devices in a particular region.   On top of that you have the complexities of the number of towers in a particular area, number of users, type of terrain (hills, flat, tall buildings).  I am not a cellular expert so I am sure I am not doing it justice.  That being said, I have worked on projects involving wireless and one thing that I found common amongst providers is that the data about frequency and bandwidth usage for a specific tower was sparse and any data the provider did have was very closely guarded, even to our teams who were trying to help them.

This is one area where I would legislate laws.  Any service provider in the wireless space would be required to provide real-time access to their cellular usage data.  That data is accessible 24×7 by government.  It is a legal requirement to getting and maintaining a license.   Sounds a little draconian? I know.  The problem is that we have to trust the service providers to do the right thing.  To do what is best for everyone.  They won’t.  They will do what is best for them and their shareholders and what makes them the most money (they legally have to do this).  If this happens to line up with what is best for everyone great. But doing the right thing for everyone is not their goal.   Oversight is needed and it has to be legally enforceable.

Bandwidth is something that can be unfairly leveraged by a single user or group of users unlike any other utility. Not sure I completely agree with this.  I think given the current setup, and investment (or lack of)  in wireless and broadband infrastructure  it is easier to exploit bandwidth by a single user or group of users than other utilities.  Utilities such as electricity, gas, and the highway have been around long enough that we have technology and people in place to monitor these resources.  We have years of experience with these resources, their abuse and problems.  As such, we have proven technology in place, and experienced people and procedures to detect and manage problems.  In the service provider world these are not as prevalent.  I worked for a company that provided these types of services.  There are a few problems.  First, the technology is new and developing.  Unlike electricity and gas that have been around for years.  Second, the cost to purchase these newly developed and unproven technologies is high.  It is seen as an investment with little to no return and in a competitive market that is a really tough sell.  Third, the service providers are not sure where all this technology is going either.  Over the last few years it looks like everything is going mobile and it is, but what is next?  What should they prepare for?  What new technology will they be required to purchase to handle the next ‘wave’ of customer wants?  They don’t know either.

For me it all comes down to oversight not bandwidth management.  It is not reasonable to assume that a business will do the right thing when it comes into conflict with making money.  As an example, the net neutrality debate has been going on for years.  The only time service providers make any good faith efforts has been when there is a real threat of regulation.  A infamous ISP in the USA blocked P2P of it’s users quietly and didn’t tell anyone.  When people suspected and asked if they were blocking it was denied.  It wasn’t until an annoyed customer with the technological background and know how sat down and proved they were in fact blocking P2P they finally admitted it.  I’ve seen policies deployed at service providers to allow quick response times when someone is ‘checking’ the response time, but shape when actually downloading a game (yes, there is technology that will do this and it is deployed).  The customer service representatives are typically unaware of these policies and how they affect customers.  If they are aware, they are not permitted to tell customers what exactly they are doing (hopefully this is changing).

The Internet is no longer a luxury.  It is no longer something the ‘geeks’ just do.  Like electricity, gas, medicine, food and others, it is a necessity to functioning today.  Giving a company in the business of making money off traffic,  the power to decide what traffic is or is not important is not smart.  There needs to be oversight.  That oversight needs to be independent of the requirement to make money off traffic, have the ability to  review (in real time) decisions made around traffic management, and most importantly legally enforceable.

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Lots of discussion about the latest Google and Verizon agreement on Net Neutrality in an attempt to avoid government regulation.   Even our NDP government has commented.  I recall a discussion a years ago about creating a ‘new Internet’.  The idea was that it would be a separate network  that would be paid for.  Think back prior to the Internet to the days of  AOL, and many dial-up BBS where you paid to access content on their systems.

If the big ISPs are thinking about creating separate premium networks, they need Google to index them and provide a method for people to find this premium information.  Google wants to index ‘everything’ and be the place to go to find information, so it only makes sense they work with the ISPs to not be left in the cold.

It is too bad Google has backed down on their net neutrality stance.  Their rationalization includes the need to get government and industry to move forward, need to create a position of compromise.  No matter, at the end of the day, Google has backed down and changed their position period.  This unfortunately has large ramifications for Net Neutrality.

To me, the answer is simple.

An ISP should be in the business of moving data quickly. Who originates that data, what the packets of flows contain does not matter to an ISP.  The ISP routes the data to its destination as quickly and efficiently as possible. They charge appropriately in a competitive and open market for the service.  Using this revenue, they can upgrade and provision their networks accordingly.  This should be legislated as a requirement and enforced and they should have to justify if asked by government why they are doing what they are doing and provide appropriate proof as required.

An ISP should charge accordingly. Enough of the excuses that people won’t pay the appropriate amount of money required so we can upgrade the infrastructure to meet demands. You  are just scared of competition.  If all the ISPs charge for usage (like electrical companies), people will pay it.  They will have to if they want to use the Internet, and I’d argue the Internet is considered a required service, just like electricity.  I’ve read studies showing people will forgo TV service and phone service to keep their Internet.  If you can’t cover your costs and expenses, then go out of business.  There is always competition waiting to service the customers you are not able to.

An ISP should NOT be permitted to be involved with or own any type of content providing service. This should be legislated.  You route packets, monitor links, and manage the network.  That is what you do best.  That is all you are permitted to do, so do it well.  This should be legally enforced.  You do not provide any content, content providers do that.  Just as my  electrical company doesn’t provide me with anything more than electricity to my home.  Other business provides services that use the electricity, not my electrical company – they provide me with electricity and charge accordingly.

An ISP does NOT monitor content and are not law enforcement. ISPs are experts at moving data not investigations.  Law enforcement and private companies that specialize in investigations and criminal activity do the investigations.  ISPs never act as law enforcement.  Questioning the legality of the data or activity is not the ISPs responsibility and they do not care (and should not be held accountable).  Similar to an electrical company where a house is using way more electricity than other typical houses – you provide and charge them accordingly.  If law enforcement is investigating criminal activity (what they do best) and provide you with a warrant to obtain the usage at a particular location you service, you may provide that information to law enforcement but that is it.  Law enforcement takes that information and does the investigation – that is what they do best.

Is it more complicated then that?  Personally I am doubtful it is.

What do you think an ISP should be legally permitted to do?

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Update (Aug 13, 2010 @10:22): Kenneth David (@kennethDavid) wrote a response to my post.  You can read it here.

Have you ever seen the Verified by Twitter logo.  It is suppose to give the public assurance that the person that holds the account is the real person and not someone pretending to be them.  Off and on over the last few weeks I have been trying to find out what the procedure is? What are the requirements?  How to they prove the individual is who they say they are?  Does Twitter intend to role it out to everyone?  I have had no luck.  Any queries seem to go into a vacuum.  They have this page which says:

To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a ‘Verified Account’ feature. We’re working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis. Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!

The first and last statements are what interests me, “To prevent identify confusion” and “Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!”.

I have always been a fan of the music group The Corrs.  One of the members, Sharon Corr has gone out on her own and is creating some songs and getting ready to release an album.  I have been following her on Twitter. She has a Verified by Twitter account. Her twitter ID is @Sharon_Corr.  If I look at her account, from the picture and links to her website and videos I can be reasonable certain it is her.  However, what if you were looking for a different Sharon Corr.  There must be more than one Sharon Corr in the world.  So I randomly tried @SharonCorr.  This person appears to be someone who writes poetry.  But is her name really Sharon Corr?  What if it is and she applies for a Twitter verified account?  Will Twitter verify it and give her the Verified by Twitter logo?  If her name is Sharon Corr, then they should.  But that might confuse someone like myself, looking for the singer Sharon Corr, so maybe they won’t.

How does Verified by Twitter make me feel safe as a user of Twitter?  If they fully roll this program out, they will encounter multiple people with the same name that all have verified accounts.  Maybe they use the URL on the profile page as the key.  If I see that the URL points to Sharon Corr’s website and there is a Verified by Twitter logo I can be certain that the person that has the website URL, also owns the Twitter account.  Of course that would confirm the relationship between the twitter account and the website, not the actual person Sharon Corr.  This of course assumes they know what I am looking for?  How do they know which Sharon Corr I want?

I looked up Taylor Swift for fun.  Her account is Verified by Twitter.  Her ID is @taylorswift13.    There is also a @taylorswift13x.  If you look at the two accounts they are very similar.

Taylor Swift’s real account (I think)

The website doesn’t help, because the URL points to itself.  We know Taylor Swift is popular so if you look at the followers count and combine that with the tweets and news articles you can conclude this is her account … maybe.

A fake Taylor Swift account (I think)

This is probably the fake one because of the follower count.  But then again, maybe this persons name is Taylor Swift and maybe this is the person I am looking for, not the popular one.  I am very confused now and Twitter said in their statement above that they were going “To prevent identify confusion”.  In order to do that, you actually have to know what identity I want to find, you can’t just guess. But that is what they are doing ‘guessing’ what I want based on popularity.  I think Verified by Twitter is just security theater.  The verified account doesn’t help.  Verifying someone is a complex problem and  putting a logo on a page just doesn’t cut it.

Maybe the logo should really be “Twitter verifies this to be the popular person you might be looking for logo”?

Ever wonder if you were being compensated appropriately?  Maybe you are being under paid or maybe you are being overpaid.  Being under paid or over paid is often typical.  In the first case, you might have been in your current position for 2 years and the cost to hiring an individual in your role with your skill set has increased significantly.  Often times since you have been at the company for a while, you have received the standard increase in salary of x percent which is less than the current market rate.   In the latter case, the market value of someone in your position with your experience has dropped.  New hires are cheaper, but the employer typically doesn’t drop your salary, they just give you the nominal x percent raise per year.

I know one individual who was at a company for a number of years.  He moved within the company to manage a new team.  He was surprised to learn the amount of money his team members were making compared to his salary.   He then became really upset when he learned that an individual that now reported to him was making more money than he was.  The company rectified the situation of course, but these things happen.  Salaries get out of alignment with the market.

I have been trying to determine my market value lately.  I hate the money part, I always have.  I like doing interesting stuff with cool people.  For me the money is secondary, tertiary or even further down the list, it always has been.  That being said, you have to pay the bills, and you want to be treated fairly. In order to know that you are being treated fairly, you need to have some data to compare and contrast.  I have tried several methods including on-line databases, research reports on salaries for people in technology.  I found them to vary widely regardless of the factors.  I didn’t trust the the data I was getting.  The results were all over the board.

I have however found the answer.  My solution was to query my network.  Via E-Mail, face to face conversations and Twitter, I asked a selected variety of individuals in the technology field.  Some managers, some directors, others owners of companies for input based on a few simple criteria including years of experience, location, and type of opportunity.  The responses were great.  They varied in detail and some included bonus and wages but information was very consistent across the network.   I am now much more comfortable with the market value for myself.

Personally, I have always wished that people were more open with their compensation.  Not to be nosy, but I think the openness would help many people and the industry in general.  Unfortunately, it is considered a very ‘private’ matter.  Most companies of course have explicit rules that say you can not discuss your compensation.  You can understand why they do this of course, it is to their advantage not the communities.

I’m realizing more and more that my personal network has a lot of untapped value. I need to harness it more and I also need to ensure I give back even more as that is what keeps it going. To all the individuals that responded to my query thank you.

Do you know what you are financially worth in your market?  Is the value accurate?

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I live in Canada.  The current Winter Olympics of 2010 are in Vancouver B.C. which last time I checked was in Canada. According to NBC I am not permitted to view the Olympics due to Copyright.  The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver B.C. Canada is restricted to viewers within the United States.

Of course I was able to view the videos.  Amazing what you can accomplish with a simple proxy plus some software to save the video to disk for normal viewing.  This is the Olympics – where the world comes together to compete share and all that.  Yet there is copyright being applied nationally.  Just silly. Geo-IP is silly as well for this type of enforcement.  When it comes to content delivery networks, Geo-IP is very beneficial to delivering data efficiently, but its use for copyright between borders needs to go away.

Normally I wouldn’t bother to tune in specifically to listen to Tiger Woods apologize, but I happened to be somewhere where it was on the radio so I listened.  I watched his apology again last night.  To me it didn’t feel sincere, it felt scripted, controlled.  I admit that would be a tough thing to do without some preparation, that isn’t what really bothered me.  What really bothered me about his apology I have been bothered with before.  I have observed it previously in other apologies, interviews and statements from individuals in the public eye.

Tiger was upset about the media probing his family and following his daughter to her school.  He made statements such as:

“what we say will remain between the two of us”

“everyone one of these questions and answers is a matter between Elin and me”

“these are issues between a husband and wife”

I have seen this many times before and here is the thing; when you choose a path which moves you more in the public eye, you loose some of your private life, period, full-stop.  It has always been this way.  More specifically, if you choose to become a politician, police officer, actor, sports professional, appear on a reality TV show, CEO of a major company, popular blogger or anything else where you increase your exposure in the public eye, you choose to sacrifice some if not all of your private life.  This choice extends in different degrees to your family, friends and anyone else connected to you.  Grasp, think about, and understand this concept.   Seriously consider it and the possible repercussions.  Now make your decision.  Choose wisely, because you, your family, and everyone involved with you will live with this decision.

While I understand the frustration this probably causes these people to feel, and I personally feel bad for Tiger’s daughter, I do, Tiger made that choice.  Consciously or not, when Tiger decided to pursue a career as a golf professional he made that choice for himself, his family, his daughter and anyone else involved in his private life.  Right or wrong that is what happened.

Especially in todays world of the Internet, blogging, twitter and other social media, the expectation of a private life that remains private is just silly.  Loosing some or all of your private life is part of the choice when you decide to do something that puts you more in the public eye, and it is not negotiable.   If you have made a choice to be in the public eye then when you apologize to the public, don’t expect a private life.  To me it shows a lack accepting responsibility for your choice and maybe a little bit of stupidity.  Instead, consider the public eye a risk factor when making decisions and give it the appropriate weight because it is a factor and this factor is not in your control.  Deciding where to go with your wife for dinner, where to take your family for vacation, what dentist to use, what school to send your daughter to, purchasing your son that Iphone, having an affair, or whatever the decision is, all require a risk assessment of the public eye factor.  Assess the risk and decide accordingly.  Yes, that probably sucks, but you chose that when you chose to be in the public eye.   Ignoring, downplaying, pleading or trying to control it won’t make it go away.  When you use your credit card, you accept the terms of service.  Even if you didn’t read them, they don’t go away.  The credit card company will still hold you to them.  It is the same when you choose something that will knowingly or not put you and your loved ones in the public eye.

I personally do not care about Tiger Woods’ private life.  I have enough trouble keeping up with my family and friends lives.  I typically don’t read gossip articles or posts.   I have no real interest in private lives of people that I do not have a relationship with.  I do feel bad for his daughter.  For her that must really suck.  I dislike the paparazzi and could never do that job and feel good about myself.  I hope Tiger as her dad has learned to factor his daughter into his decisions in the future.  But don’t expect a private life when you make a choice that puts you more in the public eye.  That is just silly and history shows that it never works.

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This post is not security or technical.

Today, we attended the first annual Splat Fest.  The festival was on the McCully’s farm in St. Mary’s, Ontario.  It was Sunday, something to do and seemed interesting.  It featured locally produced heirloom tomatoes.  I found them to be really good and the different tomatoes had quite different tastes and textures.  It is interesting what you don’t know, when your main source of food is a Loblaws, or other superstore.  Need to find the time to visit more of these farms and purchase food directly.  I don’t even mind paying a little more given the difference in taste and selection.

Our daughter brought a friend of hers along.  There was a corn maze, horse rides, bunny’s to hold, goats to feed, and tomato throwing at a target.  There is also a store, that smelled wonderful.  I purchased two home made pies.  For the first splat fest it was done well.  Look forward to next year.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dokas/102499448/

I picked my daughter from school the other day. As we were driving home she said. “Dad, did you know that downloading is illegal?” I asked her who told her that. She said a teacher told her. I then asked her, what is downloading? Her answer was “when you get movies and songs from the Internet”.

It really upsets me that the MPAA, RIAA and other lobby type groups have the power to actually influence the educational system in this way. It bothers me more that I have teachers teaching my child concepts that they themselves obviously do not understand and probably have read some propaganda from one of these lobby groups and assume that it is truth.

I suspect this is going to surprise some people but … downloading is _NOT_ the process of obtaining movies and songs from the Internet. Downloading _IS_ the transfer of data from one device to another, where the device receiving the data initiated the requested.  Sure you can download a movie or a song, but you can also download a word processing document, you can download a database file, you can download a custom graphic, you can download a piece of open-source or free software, you can download anything really. The concept of downloading has nothing to do with what you are downloading.

Is downloading bad? According to my daughter it is.  An analogy would be teaching the concept that guns are bad.   As a normal citizen in Canada it is illegal to carry a handgun. Any citizen wandering around with a handgun strapped to their belt will have people scared, running away and win themselves a meeting with a police swat team very quickly. If you see a police officer wandering around with a gun on their side, there is no panic, no running away. People just carry on. The gun isn’t bad. It is who has the gun that determines good or bad. As a society we assume that police will only use their guns for good and so seeing a uniformed police officer with a gun is perfectly acceptable.  This is one of the reasons why plain clothed officers go to great lengths to hide their side arms, the general public can not be certain they are law enforcement just by looking at them.

With downloading, everyone has the ability to do it and there are no restrictions. It has been and continues to be a normal part of computing since the days when on-line bulletin board systems were popular.  The concept of moving data from one device to another is what makes the Internet work. Every time you go read a web page, blog, or watch a news clip from a news site you could argue that you are technically ‘downloading’.

I am now slowly educating my daughter on the concepts of downloading and uploading. Once those are grasped, I’ll work on what is illegal and what is not when using downloading. I hope that if schools and other educational institutions do choose to teach children about why downloading content that you do not own is wrong, they first understand the concepts themselves and teach it properly.

courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephangeyer/3497409683/

I came across this post on high school student readiness for university.  What interested me were the questions  towards the end of the article.  “What is an author?”, “Who has the authority or expertise to speak?”, “How is trust established?”, “What counts as evidence?”  I would love to know if there is a consensus on these.  I suspect not, and I suspect there never will be.

I know some  computer scientists that present great research at conferences, do amazing work, and are really smart.  Many of them do not have formal schooling but are ‘self taught’.  Are they experts?  In my eyes within their subject area they sure are.  I have no issues referencing them or their work as supporting evidence for a particular problem or project I am working on or involved with.    Anyone that implies they are not qualified because they haven’t published papers through ‘official’ channels is just being silly.

Similar to Music.  There are people such as Jann Arden that I believe have no formal music training (she indicated this once at a concert I attended).    I on the other hand took many years of formal piano.  If anyone was to take my knowledge of music over Jann Arden due to my ‘formal’ training, I’d seriously question their intelligence.

Is Wikipedia bad?  For me it depends on who writes and edits the particular article in question.  How do you verify someones credentials?  Not sure.  Personally, I just assess for myself and use common sense.  For example, if there is a article on a musical concept that Jann Arden or others in her area of expertise agree with and support then personally I would be fine using it as a reference.

I am glad the questions above are being discussed.  I’d love to listen in on the discussions.

As our house is being shown, I am working from a nearby Starbucks.  I have had a Starbucks card for a while now and had not used it much till recently.   I started using it because the Starbucks around here find it necessary to charge for Internet access which bothers me.  With a Starbucks card you get 2 hours free a day, so I started populating mine and using it.

I just logged in to check it while sitting here, and found they keep a history of your purchases so you can review.

I bet like most companies that provide cards, the information they store on you and analyze for research is much more extensive than what is available to you on the website.  With all this data, you could data mine quite extensively for patterns.  Questions such as What do you tend to purchase and when? What else was available in the store at the time that you didn’t purchase?  How does your pattern compare to others that purchased items in the same hour?  What is the average spending per day/week/month based on postal code?  Many other questions, but you get the idea.  I wonder if you requested to see ‘all’ the information they have obtained on you, they would actually show you?

The other reason for the Starbucks card was a friend of mine who said “The cards are great!  It’s not real money that way”.