Dean Landolt 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: Would The Entertainment Industry Follow A Three Strikes Rule Itself?

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2008 @ 04:19pm

    RE: Shohat

    Interesting analogy Shohat -- I'll certainly have to borrow that...

    I agree that the relationship between the two isn't commutative. But frankly, I don't believe we'd need go to such extends as Doctorow proposes to demonstrate the absurdity of three-strikes: given strict enforcement and many eyes on them, it's unlikely many entertainment firms could go very long without being caught with their hand in the copyright cookie jar, violating someone's copyright one way or another.

  • On the post: Beer, Blogs And Bias

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2008 @ 06:45am

    Yo Yo (what? too cheesy?)

    Mike certainly isn't suggesting that nobody this is THE future of journalism, just one of many possible means for journalists to collect a paycheck. And do you really believe there's such a thing as independent, unbiased exists in traditional journalism? Really?

  • On the post: Beer, Blogs And Bias

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2008 @ 06:04am

    I call Hanlon's Razor on this one...

    "Mr. Schuhmacher adds that he writes fewer positive pieces about Miller than he once did because he knows Brew Blog will always publish the same stories"

    My read on this quote is slightly different from yours -- it seems to be saying that Miller's disincentivizing him to give them positive press not because he's bitter but because he knows the angle's already covered.

    It's still a pretty pathetic outlook, but I don't think the quote necessarily shows too much malice...

  • On the post: The Open Source Model Is About Organization, Not Who Signs Your Paycheck

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2008 @ 06:34am

    Picking on Nick Carr is fun...

    ...but there's really no sense in quoting him -- he's obviously link-baiting. He knows the internets will jump all over this kind of flame about as fast as his "sharecropping" notions.

  • On the post: Changing The Internet's Architecture Isn't So Easy

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2008 @ 12:00pm

    Re: Really?

    PRMan said: "If AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast all got together...P2P as we know it would cease to exist, even if it still "technically" was out there working. If 90% of America can't access it, it will cease to exist."

    Come on, man -- I live inside the Beltway and even I'm not that foolishly ethnocentric! Oh, and there's the fact that, as Tim's noted in the past, it's nye on impossible to block encrypted torrents -- SSL may be weak, but not so weak that they could break and sniff all those packets just to traffic shape. So there's that whole technical limitation -- no need to fear.

    Of course, I agree with inc -- those kinds of practices should be illegal (thought it's hard to tell these days) and should be trust-busted fairly quickly (hopefully) -- of course, it's not hard to imagine a public outcry so deafening someone like Lessig could end up in charge.

  • On the post: Botnet vs. Botnet: Can A Good Botnet Block A Bad One?

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2008 @ 07:39pm

    RE: Stupid, stupid idea

    AC:

    One: Even if it's working you are adding a lot of network traffic for something that...is working?

    And no, you're not really adding much network traffic -- and even so any additional traffic would just be O(1). You're simply distributing proxies to handle incoming requests -- it's technically not all that crazy sounding features that Just Work every day.

    Two: this gripe has a bit more legitimacy complaint, but it applies equally to building and networking any equipment equally.

    The bottom line is DDoS attacks are one of the few remaining achilles heels of web architecture. Technical solutions like the one proffered are not only possible, they damn well may be necessary should Russia light up its bot net again like it suspected to have done against Estonia.

  • On the post: Warner Music Latest To Jump On The Music Tax Bandwagon

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2008 @ 11:27am

    "that 96% number is made up and pure bunk"

    I'm sure it's made up, but it's certainly not bunk. You of all people should know that given a literal reading of our ridiculous laws, it's certainly 100%. It's not hard to empirically prove that even the most casual internet user is no doubt guilty of "millions of dollars" of infringement in a given week -- and that's the real crime!

  • On the post: Will The Patriot Act Cost Google Business?

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2008 @ 01:35pm

    If it's such a problem, then the university is free to go spend however many millions of dollars on building its own system.

    Methinks you're giving Google engineers a little too much credit here. It shouldn't be terribly difficult to roll out a working email solution. It's only been done eleventymillion times...

    Of course, it may not have some of the sweet usability goodness of gmail, but it's not like they're for lack of options, not to mention the open-source alternatives...

  • On the post: Blu-Ray Will Likely Catch On Despite Flaws

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2008 @ 01:06pm

    "People were saying many of the same things about the DVD format a decade ago"

    VHS->DVD is more akin to the Tape->CD transition. Trying to convince consumers of the benefits of Blue-Ray is like trying to sell us on HD-Audio -- the benefits of digital-to-higher-def-digital are practically indiscernible compared to the obvious benefits of analog-to-digital.

  • On the post: The Hijacking Of An Open Source P2P App

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2008 @ 07:30am

    F**k it...

    Fork it and rebrand. It shouldn't be hard if they already have a decent community, and it would be a very *Streisand* way to build that community further. Make a stink about your plight, do a name/logo competition and drum up as much chatter as possible...

    It seems to be working for dataportability.org, who just got a c&d from, of all people, Red Hat re: their logo vs. fedora's. It's all quite a mess (the only thing they have in common is the symbol for infinity), but the dataportability group decided it would be more advantageous to turn this into a positive rather than waste resources pissing in the wind.

  • On the post: Could A National Broadband Policy Boost The Economy By Over $100 Billion?

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2008 @ 08:40am

    I'm still a little apprehensive accepting that a national broadband policy is within the purview of the Feds, but propping it up against the Interstate system analogy certainly helps. In spite of the disaster it is in my neck of the woods (D.C.), it's certainly been a boon (for everyone but the railroads, of course). I fear we live in different times though -- imagine what the highways would look like if Eisenhower let the railroad tycoons plan the routes and you have a pretty good idea of why I'm apprehensive.

    That said, I'll acknowledge it's a natural monopoly, and something must be done. Why can't we just run fiber in parallel to our electrical grid and be done with it? I know, I know -- it would kill wired platform competition, but so be it -- there's still plenty to fight over in wireless.


    @Danno: I believe so -- and I think locking in the wrong platform (i.e. nationwide 802.11) would be another terrible unintended consequence of having legislators and lobbyists write this kind of policy.


    @matt: too much broadband will be a problem to anyone in the business of charging for the delivery of information products. Everybody, and I mean *everybody* will benefit (including the aforementioned, as they will be dragged, kicking and screaming if need be, into a more productive business model).

  • On the post: Democratic Parties: An Interview With UCLA Computer Scientist Kevin Eustice

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2008 @ 12:48pm

    Context is king...

    It seems to me ranking a song one to five isn't quite granular enough for this application. I may have classical pieces or other more studious works hanging out on my playlist -- and depending on the partygoers, many of them may have the very same, but that certainly doesn't imply I'd want them to play in that *context*. Of course, ranking songs on an additional, contextual dimension seems like more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps in the same way they're drawing psychoacoustic data to "long tail" the resultset, they could use some of that to make sure duds don't slip through.

  • On the post: Anonymous P2P May Not Deliver — But It Doesn't Need To

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 15 Jan, 2008 @ 08:03pm

    Another sisyphusian struggle...

    Sure, bluetooth stinks. And anonymity's tough. But as you acknowledge, there's no stopping p2p—even if it's private darknets facilitated by more "substantially noninfringing uses" like, for instance, collaboration or groupware apps.

    But your inference that it's just a matter of time before Tor is figured out (or even outright outlawed) is suspect at best. Even if law enforcement were able to break a Tor node, whatever technique they use will only work once...

  • On the post: Is There Any Need For The Concept Of A TV Channel Any More?

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2007 @ 06:36am

    There's more to channels than scheduling...

    Mike -- you answered your own question...

    "If people are no longer thinking in terms of channels, but in shows, does a la carte pricing make that much sense? If anything, a la carte channels may push people to move even more of their TV watching to the web..."

    Great. So what's wrong with this picture (other than further gov't intervention in media)?

    The options still aren't *great* for watching internet video on your HD set, but they'll get there (if we ever fix the broadband competition problem).

    Oh -- and there's more to the channel concept than scheduling, or branding for that matter. After all, I got here via feed reader. That BestNetTech.com RSS feed? It's a channel too. There are all kinds of great video RSS feeds -- so even if you move your eyeballs to the web, given enough time, you'll find eventually yourself channeling into a channel...

    Channels are but one way of many ways to sort and filter content -- when you find one you like, it saves thought cycles to find something after every EOF. Plus, they're what we're used to, so they ain't going anywhere anytime soon!

  • On the post: Inventors And Patent Attorneys Sue USPTO Over Supposedly Unqualified Appointment

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2007 @ 06:58am

    Patent backlogs

    "...is the backlog and confusion in the patent office the result of bad management there..."

    As a contractor there, I can say with absolute certainty: YES. But from a policy perspective, the backlog is the result of incentivizing bad patent applications, as BestNetTech's done a great job of highlighting.

    "...or the result of a community of insulated patent specialists that want to assert their importance in the new info economy?"

    It would certainly seem that these connected specialists harbor a great deal of influence when it comes to the PTO setting policy, the gross mismanagement of the agency cannot be attributed to a few lawsuits and hordes of overzealous patent attorneys.

  • On the post: Vonage's High-Spending, Low-Return Ways Make It Ideal For The MVNO Market

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2007 @ 07:59am

    Carlo...

    I understand your skepticism, but do you really believe dual-modes or multi-carrier bundles would differentiate Vonage only on price?

    How many people yearn to unstrap themselves from their carriers? With Vonage diving in, it will be easy to get solid, consistent cell service from any tower they do a deal with -- Vonage would even route the call through the cheapest carrier they have a deal with.

    This starts to sound an awful lot like turning the carriers into bitpipes -- something you advocate. Maybe you're right -- Vonage's free wheeling ways may not allow it to come out on top, but what it could do is FINALLY open up the mobile market and start to bridge the carriers -- that's the story worth writing about!

  • On the post: Justice Department Misses The Point In Suit Against Realtors

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2006 @ 08:46pm

    not quite...

    "That fault rests with the government, which has put the NAR in charge of regulating its industry, and deciding who can and can't be a broker."

    Joe: While that may be a common perception, that actually couldn't be further from the truth. I used to have my real estate license in the state of Maryland and definitely wasn't a "realtor". My father's been a broker for some time and never once belonged to any local, state or national group of realtors. Admittedly, he works on the commercial side of things, but every now and then dabbles in residential. The only thing his refusal to pay up to the local realtor racket has cost him is access to MLS data. This data, and their piddly trademark, is pretty much all these associations bring to the table (that, and exhaustive, half-hour long 'ethics' training at their conferences, of course).

    Like you said, they can do what they want with their data. The states are actually the licensing bodies, and have by no means created monopoly conditions. In fact, check out some of the cut-rate brokers dropping their commissions and at least trying to innovate a bit with a la carte pricing models -- and the industry groups' backlash against these new business models.

    I appreciate the DoJ's attention to the matter. But if you look a little deeper, it's pretty obvious it won't be too long before the market corrects (read: bitchslaps) this backward, protectionist practice. So I'm with you -- what they do with their data is their own damn business. What I do with my dollar is mine -- and it won't be going to any Realtor(R) any time soon!

  • On the post: Businesses Prefer Stringent Patent Exam Process Rather Than Faster Grants

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2006 @ 06:47pm

    USPTO examiner reporting...

    "The patent office looks at how many patents an examiner approves, and rejecting a patent doesn't help that number."

    Mike, I'm curious where you got that information from? While I'm 100% with you in the intellectual property debate, I happen to be a contractor working on the USPTO's data warehouse and I can say with some certainty this doesn't appear to be the case, at least from the kinds of reports we support for management.

  • On the post: The Importance Of Zero In Destroying The Scarcity Myth Of Economics

    Dean Landolt ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2006 @ 07:36am

    PhotoshopXXX

    "Is it just me or have I explained this about a thousand times? YOU DON'T JUST SELL THAT PRODUCT! You use it to sell something else that is scarce. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I'm not sure why people keep ignoring that point."

    Mike: your point makes the assumption that people actually want to work for a living. We all know that's not the prevailing "American Dream". You've railed against it constantly, but *the big payout* is what drives a lot of people. The "pet rock" or "Jump...to Conclusions" business model, so to speak, seems to be a major driving force, as you often, astutely point out.

    In your world, if people do something fantastic, they still actually have to *work* for a living! While I agree with your world-view, I thinkthis is the crux of the misunderstanding in the thread above. You could repeat yourself til you're blue in the face -- nobody seems to want to hear that.