No matter what side of things you are on, here is some good news that will be a blessing to many from him.
President Obama is rolling out a new plan to boost the speed of internet connections throughout the U.S.
For one, he'll be asking the FCC for assistance in neutralizing state laws (PDF) that prevent cities from building municipal broadband services.
"At speeds of 4 Mbps or less, 75 percent of consumers have a choice between two or more fixed providers, and 15 percent can select among three or more ISPs.
However, in the market for Internet service that can deliver 25 Mbps downstream—the speed increasingly recognized as a baseline to get the full benefits of Internet access—three out of four Americans do not have a choice between providers."
The state laws laws restrict competition and give the major ISPs no incentive to invest and innovate.
Obama will also be directing other federal agencies to increase the amount of money they grant and loan to ISP-related projects.
"Any effort by the FCC to preempt anti-muni-broadband laws will likely focus on a controversial part of the FCC's congressional charter known as "Section 706."
That part of the law recognizes the FCC's authority to stimulate broadband deployment, which supporters of preemption argue the tactic would promote.
If Section 706 sounds familiar, that's because it's also the legal tool some say should be used to promote net neutrality, or the principle that broadband companies shouldn't speed up or slow down some Web sites over others."
But truth be told:
In most cases the "advertised" throughput speed has a tenuous relation with the actually delivered speed, which will actually vary over time, depending on the application, the server, and many other factors.
But why do we care? Why do we need to think about broadband carefully? Several reasons:
- If we want to decide who has and who does not have broadband, we actually need to agree on what we mean by broadband
- If we want to decide who can take advantage of one type of application or another, we need to know what they are actually getting today, and what is the gap between that and what they actually need to get
- If we need to know how much it would cost the country to enable all or a subset of its households and businesses to take advantage of one application or another, we need to know what the gap is between where we are and where we want to be.
- If we want to ensure that consumers have a clear and accurate view of what they are getting for their money, we need to decide what are the important metrics, and how to measure them.
Now the average "real world" internet connections are made up of many devices, which are configured to have different data settings, and are connected by extremely old & over loaded cables.
So your pc may be set to 1000mbs but the network that provides your internet service provider access to the internet (NOT your internet connection to Comcast or At&t) but their connection to the internet network is made up of many different devices configured to perform in different ways and restricted by the cables in between them.
So you see how a connection provided by "Comcast" for example could be slower than 256kbs at times.
Many of the major service providers are finding alternative ways & technologies to make your connection even faster than the contracted throughput ratings of anywhere from 200kbs to 700kbs for most broadband connections, but this does NOT fix the underlying issues with old POTS networks still used today to interconnect networks to make up the internet.
So, in all reality Broadband internet is a extremely loosely used term to do no more than designate a certain connection as higher speed than dial up. This includes satellite connections too! They range usually from 100kbs - 400kbs. This is Not much higher than a dial up connection by any means.
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And the push back against those who violate our privacy continues...
"Peerio."
Cryptographers devote their careers to the science of securing your communications. Twenty-four-year-old Nadim Kobeissi has devoted his to the art of making that security as easy as possible.
His software creations like Cryptocat and Minilock encrypt instant messages or shared files with three-letter-agency-level protection, with user interfaces that require Lincoln-Log-level skills.
Now he’s combining elements of his dead-simple apps into what he’s calling his biggest release yet, a single platform designed to encrypt everything you and any group of collaborators do on the desktop.
“With Peerio everything you share or communicate with your team is secured with state-of-the-art encryption, and it’s as easy as using Gmail.
You don’t need to learn to use it,” says Kobeissi. “Peerio brings crypto to where the people are.”
This is a really fantastic development, putting the power back into your own hands to be private again. No more violation of your space, no more intrusive contractors hired to watch everything you do.
That is for now, until those up in the high cotton on mahogany row make it illegal to lock your door so to speak.
The Free Encryption App That Wants to Replace Gmail, Dropbox, and HipChat
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If you have ever traveled in a foreign land, you know how at times it can be a challenge to communicate to someone who does not speak your language.
Well Google now has become the world traveler's best friend...
"Google is beaming a bit closer to Star Trek's universal translator with the newest edition of its Translate app. Rolling out over the next few days for iOS and Android users, the latest version of Google Translate offers two key features — the ability to instantly converse with someone speaking in a different language and the capability to translate street signs and other images into your native language.
Both features have been available in the Android app to some extent. For example, Google Translate for Android has long offered real-time translation of conversations.
But Google's goal behind the latest version of the app is to enhance and simplify the features so they work more quickly and fluidly without any lag time.
The latest version of Google Translate aims to change that. To converse with someone speaking in a different language, a user chooses his language and that of the other speaker.
He then taps the microphone icon in the app, starts speaking in his native or selected language, and then taps the mic icon again.
The app will recognize which of the two languages is being spoken, and then the two speakers can carry on their conversation without having to keep tapping the mic.
In a test of the app's instant translation, The New York Times said it did prove to be a step forward; though, it's not science fiction just yet.
The app fared best with short sentences that didn't include jargon, and it worked better when the users paused between each translation.
Google also has beefed up the app's ability to translate street signs. Previously, you'd have to take a photo of the foreign text to get a translation of it.
Now, you simply point your camera at the sign and the translated text appears overlaid on your screen — even if you're not connected to the Internet.
This feature is made possible courtesy of Quest Visual's Word Lens app for iOS and Android, which Google acquired when it purchased the company last May.
This feature supports English translated to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Google says it's working to add more languages."
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A Great Idea!
Google's battle against poor passwords continues.
The company is now testing a new Google Account option that lets users login using their phone, skipping the part where you have to enter your password.
The feature uses your phone to authenticate your identity by bringing up a notification that allows you to grant or deny access to your account.
Google confirmed it was testing the feature with a small group of users.
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It's Only Taxpayer Money...NBD...no big deal.
Spoofing is far from the only problem facing Department of Homeland
Security and the way it gets drones to the border. In addition to giving grants to law enforcement agencies to purchase UAVs, DHS also has many of its own.
Last year, the department's own inspector general declared that DHS drone purchasing program, which had spent $360 million since 2005 — $62 million in 2013 alone — was largely a failure.
DHS had taken delivery of 11 MQ-9 Reaper drones, unarmed but otherwise similar to the ones used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DHS anticipated that the cost per flight hour would be $2,468, far lower than the actual $12,225.
The agency was using accounting tricks to move the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead off the books.
Even the actual flights hours — 5,102 — were a fraction of the promised 23,296.
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For over a decade, Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights have been a festive online holiday tradition for millions of Internet users world-wide, so it was sadly the end of an era last year, when the Griswold wanna-be hung up his Santa Hat in 2014.
But with the "Internet of Things" being the rage these days, it didn't take long for another Griswold to emerge from the North Pole, or at least pretty darn close to it.
Ken Woods from Fairbanks, Alaska has his house online 24 hours a day with a dozen ON/OFF buttons that Internet users can use to toggle his lights with a click of a mouse.
Here's a video of it in action and he uses Amazon EC2 to power it online.
(While that all looks real, low-UID /.'ers will remember that Alek did a simulation from 2002-2004 using Perl code to switch between a series of images.
Looks like the prankster dusted off that code for the Control Christmas Lights.com website.)
I, for one, welcome our new Griswold Overlords with a big HO-HO-HO
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