Posts Tagged ‘internet’

Does #BitRot Make Digital Archiving Mission Impossible?

Posted: March 23, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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bit rot

 

by @anarchyroll
3/19/2014

The concept of Bit Rot grabbed my attention and peaked my curiosity. The fact that it has already had negative and serious affects on NASA’s ability to recall and study past missions/operations kept my focus on the topic.

What is Bit Rot? It is when an information file either digital or analog decays and/or becomes permanently unreadable/irretrievable.

Most people are familiar with Bit Rot and don’t even know it yet. When a floppy disk is damaged, a CD gets heavily scratched, a record melts, a virus wipes out your hard drive.

Why is this a concern? Because with more information being stored digitally, if Bit Rot becomes widespread and isn’t addressed we as a human race could literally lose access to our archives. Like information once written in Sanskrit with tea leaves on rocks, the information could be lost forever with no way to retrieve it and given enough time,  not know it ever existed.

Is there hope? Yes, there is always hope. There is a very good Ars Technica article on emerging technology that can help  minimize bit rot going forward and possibly eliminate it’s concern on a large scale with important information. Remember, we’re not talking IG selfies and Vines. We’re talking the stuff stored in the Library of Congress.

Keep an eye on this issue and address it in terms of your personal/professional files/archives.

#Imgur Shows Social Media is #Photography

Posted: March 13, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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MM@C4Logo1ajclogo2

 

 

by @anarchyroll
3/12/2014

I used to be an antisocial type. I can still remember my friend Sam’s girlfriend at the time nagging me nonstop until I created a My Space account in 2006. I did it to get her to stop asking me about it, but I am glad she did.

Antisocial is just a modern, glossy word for coward. Too scared to put oneself on the line outside of their comfort zone in front of strangers for fear of being judged or exposed as something other than the image they have crafted of themselves in their own mind/ego.

My social muscles were undeveloped. I am still catching up to my peers all these years later. Making new friends, business contacts, and romantic partners has been at a minimum half again as hard as it is for the average able minded person. Social media has helped with this. It is like giving someone a digital business card for your personal life. That is what I always enjoyed about social media and still do.

I started making friends late, I started dating late, I joined My Space late, I joined Facebook late, I joined Twitter late. I joined Instagram the day it became available for Android. I had a friend who introduced me to Instagram at her house one night after her Oscar’s party. I scrolled through it on her iPhone and remember talking about how the app looked like the future of social media. She agreed, saying she barely used Facebook anymore after getting on Instagram when it was still #iPhoneonly.

It turns out we were both right, and weren’t nearly the only people thinking those thoughts. Social media is now completely dominated by pictures and video aka photography. If you aren’t actively taking and posting pics and videos on your social media account(s) you have already been left behind and are merely a bystander rather than a producer in the social media world whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.

The social stars are  Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Vine, Flickr, Pinterest, and the latest and greatest darling of the World Wide Web 2.0, Imgur. I thought Imgur was merely the Reddit GIF maker/host but it turns out they are much more. Bloomberg/Businessweek wouldn’t do a story about them if they weren’t.

77 million unique visitors per day uploading 1.5 million image files while spending an average of 10 minutes on the site when they stop by. Those numbers mean they’re the current HBIC in social media and may be next on the queue to be bought by Yahoo. Imgur is pronounced Imager. There’s no A in there for the same reason so many apps end in just R instead of ER. Imgur is also ground zero for cats taking over the internet in the last two years along with YouTube.

The evolution of social media from text to visual images and video was inevitable. As we went from newspaper to radio to movies/television. Social media becoming dominated by pics & video is also being mirrored in SMS. As text messages are already a relic in the era of Snapchat, KIK, and WhatsApp. Human beings prefer visual stimuli and that is why animated emoticons shall inherit the Earth.

#Verizon Donates 8 Hours of Revenue

Posted: February 9, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logoby @anarchyroll
2/9/2014

$100 million dollars is a lot of money. A big round number that looks especially good in a press release touting charitable contributions. When a company makes $4.6 billion each financial quarter however, that $100 million sounds a little less charitable. When the people receive the charity are saying they don’t need the money, they need better infrastructure and a cheaper bill, well, welcome to America.

In an excellent piece written for the  Washington Post, Brian Fung very politely writes why the nine figure monetary donation is bullshit. Again, he puts it much more politely than I. After all, what good are a bunch of iPads if the school either doesn’t have broadband or can’t afford it? Which is plenty of schools, not just the ones in the ghettos are facing.

Have you noticed your internet bill going down in the last decade? Exactly, imagine what a municipal internet bill is. No such thing as a free lunch. If we charge people to not die of cancer, what hope do kids who want to save their homework to the cloud have?

Good thing we have a socialist, liberal, communist, democratic president in office whose going to stick it to the billion dollar corporations to help the schools out right? Spoiler alert, Obama has is a moderate conservative. Nothing has been asked or demanded of the telcomm companies to provide free or even discounted rates on new infrastructure or service to schools in rural areas of America or in impoverished urban areas either (both of which still run on dial up in some cases).

$100 million is a lot of money, but when that is how much money is made in 8 out of 8,765 hours of operation, it’s a token gesture meant to distract and distort. Nothing more, nothing less. Not to mention we haven’t talked about the students who go to school starving for food, not for playing Candy Crush during home room.

#Internet Access No Longer Neutral?

Posted: January 24, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logo

by @anarchyroll
1/23/2014

The first YouTube video I ever watched was of Ted Kennedy speaking about the importance of net neutrality.  As I learned what net neutrality was through the video, it surprised me someone of Kennedy’s age had any grasp on the concept. But then I realized that net neutrality had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with money and power.  And the Kennedy family knows a lot about money and power.

Net Neutrality means that the internet like highways, an information superhighway if you will.  Highways are built and maintained based on tolls.  Much like internet infrastructure is built, upgraded, and maintained by the monthly bill you get from your internet service provider (ISP for short).  Nothing wrong there. Food, water, shelter, heating all cost money. Net neutrality is NOT about making the internet free of charge.

Net neutrality means that all data on the internet is treated the same. Checking email is the same as binge watching Netflix. Regardless of specific content OR bandwidth usage.  Net neutrality is currently the norm for the internet you and I access from our computers, NOT from our smart phones.

Anti net neutrality advocates aka the telecomm companies and ISPs want all internet to be priced like smart phone internet access aka tiered by usage.

Pro net neutrality advocates aka anyone who isn’t rich as fuck, want to make sure the ISPs and telecoms don’t gain any additional power over the internet and its content. Why? Because absolute power corrupts absolutely.  It is feared/believed that if a tier based charging system will be a floodgate to a labyrinth of tiered charges or a slippery slope.

Like how anti drug advocates say marijuana is a slippery slope to cocaine, heroin, homelessness, prostitution, robbery, prison, and spending $800 to attend an EDM concert.  Pro net neutrality advocates believe tiered service is a slippery slope to customers being price gauged AND denied content. Not only will you be charged for certain amount of usage but you’ll be charged more to access Hulu, OR less depending on what ISP you have. If you have Comcast (who is part owner of Hulu) they might allow Hulu to load faster and cheaper on your computer but charge you more and/or completely block you from accessing Netflix, YouTube, etc.

Ask yourself, do you really believe if net neutrality is taken off the books permanently, will ISPs not charge more for service? Will they not cut deals with certain content providers? Will they not nickel and dime you, me, and every internet user in the world a little bit more every single year? Even more so than they do already that is, how much was your internet and cable bill ten years ago?  Think it’s only increased because of inflation?

The end of net neutrality is literally the end of the internet as we know it. Plain and simple.  This is a fight you can’t choose to ignore. Sign a petition, write a letter, attend a protest.  Because if you ever want to watch cute cat videos for hours at a time again, for what you’re paying now, then net neutrality is for you.

www.nointernetsalestax.over

Posted: December 27, 2013 in Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logoby @anarchyroll
December 26, 2013

Why no online sales tax? A 1992 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Quill Corp v. North Dakota where it was ruled a business needed a physical presence (ie office, store, etc) to collect sales tax as opposed to just a paying customer. How was this ruling maintained for two decades? The Direct Marketing Association‘s lobbying on behalf of online behemoths like Amazon and eBay. What could force sales taxes onto online purchases? The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013. Who? The bill was sponsored by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. When do you have to start paying taxes on your online purchases? You already do in 24 states. However, surprise surprise there is a loophole and congressional gridlock holding up progress.

States must simplify their sales tax laws in order to make the collection of taxes easy. Apparatus is being provided to states free of cost to help in the transitory process/period. However, a certain political party is objecting to a new tax of any kind being put on the books. I’ll give you one guess which one, hint hint, it’s not the Whigs. In October it appeared as though the machine and momentum were both rolling in the direction of sales tax collection on all internet purchases made in the United States. But never underestimate what congressional obstructionism has the power to not do.

Even if the bill were to pass tomorrow it is already too late for the thousands of brick and mortar stores that shut down and the millions of people who lost their jobs due to being unable to compete in a game rigged against them by a law that protects e retailers created before they existed. There is hope for the future. Small businesses that are better able to adapt to and engage with technology will find that a new era where the internet is a friend and a tool as opposed to a competitor will equal opportunity and prosperity. Now if only they could get small business loans…

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