Dan York

Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...

Author's posts

Nov 11

The US Congress, PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITES… and the War For the Open Internet

US Capital
If you are a U.S. citizen and have NOT been paying attention to the madness going on in the US Congress right now with regard to the Internet, you really NEED to take a look...

If you have a website, you need to be paying attention...

If you own a domain name, you need to be paying attention...

Backed by the traditional media industries (and all their lobbying $$$) the U.S. Senate and House are considering legislation that would seriously break the Internet as we know it. Rather than the DMCA "takedown notices" that have been used to date, these new bills would require ISPs to disable access to websites.

Basically it would give corporations the ability to manipulate (through ISPs) the DNS system to block access to content that they feel is objectionable or violates their copyrights, etc.

I think we all can generally agree that stopping online piracy and illegal activities is a good goal. As well as being a consumer of online content, I am also a creator of online content, and sure, I don't want my content pirated and mis-used by others...

but a "simple" technical solution is NOT the answer!

On a purely technical point-of-view, the Internet Society has issued a DNS Filtering White Paper on why this type of filtering is not a solution to combating illegal activities... and the danger such filtering has to the fabric of the Internet and to users themselves.

In the US Senate, the bill is S.968, the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP)" Act (also known as "PIPA") while over in the house it was first known as the "E-PARASITE bill (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act)" and now has been introduced as H.3261, the "Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)".

There has been a great amount of online content generated around this issue. Some of the articles I found useful include:

PopVox has an interesting comparison of the organizations supporting and opposing S.968 and HR.3261. Look at the "Organizations Supporting" and "Organizations Opposing" tabs, although I believe there are more opposing orgs than simply those listed... still, it gives a view of the players involved.

The battle is going on right now with one of the latest updates being that tech industry reps were denied a seat at next week's House hearings and that now the 4 presenters to the committee will all be pro-SOPA entities.

Please... take a moment to read these links above... read even more... educate yourself on what the issues are - and let your opinion be known to your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate. Please spread the word online, too, as we who are users of the Internet need to let our voices be heard...

Image credit: jasonippolito on Flickr

UPDATE #1: Alex Howard has a great collection of SOPA/PIPA-related links, including a video of Senator Ron Wyden (the senator currently putting a "hold" on the PROTECT IP bill in the Senate).

UPDATE #2: While I began this post "If you are a U.S. citizen", Neville Hobson correctly pointed out that those outside the U.S. need to be concerned, too, as this type of government intervention in the Internet by the US government, if successful, will certainly spread to other governments. Plus, any issues affecting DNS will naturally have impacts outside the USA.

Please note that this blog post represents my personal opinion and has no connection whatsoever to any employers or other organizations, either past or present.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 11

The Google vs Amazon Platform Rant – A Must-Read From Steve Yegge

Google logo

What does Amazon.com do so much better than Google? And why does Amazon do everything “wrong” while Google does everything “right”… yet offer a better platform? How should you construct a “platform” so that everyone can use it?

If you are a developer, IT manager, product manager, system architect, product marketer, CTO or even a CEO, you really need to take a bit to read this “Mother of all Reply-All failures” that was written by Googler Steve Yegge and accidentally posted publicly back on October 12th. Steve pulled down his own posting of the rant, but it was re-posted to Google+ by Rip Rowan and also posted over to Hacker News. The long rant – and the comments on both sites – are worth a read:

It’s a LONG piece that gives some fascinating insight into both Amazon and Google as companies, but also into what it takes to be a “platform”.

A bit later, on October 21st, Steve Yegge posted an update indicating that he did not get fired and in fact people actually listened within Google. He also dove a bit more into Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos. And just this week he wrote a lengthy piece describing how amazing it is to work at Google, explaining a bit more about what he meant in his rant about how Google “does everything right”.

The original platform rant, though, should definitely be on a “must-read” list for people thinking about how their services could really be a “platform”…

P.S. Are we connected on Google+? If not, you can find my Google+ profile and add me to a circle…

Nov 10

Sweet! Apple iOS 5.0.1 Is Available Over-The-Air (OTA) – Faster and No iTunes Required!

For those of use with iOS devices, news of today's iOS 5.0.1 that fixes battery issues was welcome... and along with it the news that this update is available "over-the-air" (OTA). NO iTUNES SYNC REQUIRED!

Just go into Settings, then General, then Software Update. Per this article on Mashable, your device needs to either be plugged in or have over 50% battery.

Here's what it looked like on my iPad:

Ios501 ota

The Mashable piece said that the OTA update was faster and I can personally attest to that. I started the process to update my iPhone 4S via iTunes and the first step was to download the update from Apple. Several minutes later I decided to do the OTA process on my iPad2. The iPad2 finished the update process before iTunes had even finished downloading the update!

So yes, the OTA process is definitely faster!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 10

IETF Journal for October 2011 Digs into DNSSEC, Port Control Protocol, Internet Evolution

Ietfjournal oct2011
Want to learn more about what is happening with regard to standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)?  Want to understand the details about new proposals to offer another way to secure domains using DNSSEC? Never heard of the "Port Control Protocol" before and wonder how it may (or may not) help you? Want to understand some of the latest thoughts from Internet leaders about where the Internet is evolving?

The October 2011 edition of the IETF Journal gets into all of that and more. Here's the Table of Contents  (a PDF is also available for printing or ebook reading):

The IETF Journal is published three times a year and past (and future) versions can be found at:

http://isoc.org/wp/ietfjournal/

If you would like to be alerted to future editions - or would like to contribute articles - more information can be found on that page.
 

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 09

And So It Begins… Comcast Starts Rolling Out IPv6 Production Network

Ipv6 200For those of us wanting to see IPv6 deployed, yesterday brought the great news that Comcast has started rolling out its IPv6 production network to customers.

Now, granted, the initial rollout was to only 100 homes in San Francisco's East Bay. It is also restricted to a single computer directly connected to a Comcast cable modem. This initial rollout did not support home routers which are typically found for WiFi in many/most homes these days.

Still... it's a start!

The experience Comcast gains with this initial rollout will only help them with wider rollouts and the inclusion of home routers.

Kudos to Comcast for this start of their IPv6 rollout... I'm looking forward to hearing of other service providers starting their IPv6 deployments! (Time Warner, I'm talking about you! :-)

UPDATE: Comcast has now come out with two of their own blog posts on this topic:

Notice in particular this great part to the technical piece:

It is also important to note that we are deploying native dual stack, which means a customer gets both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. That means we are not using tunneling technology or large scale Network Address Translation (NAT). Using a tunnel introduces additional overhead compared to not using one (native IPv6), as your traffic must traverse a relaybefore going to the destination and back. And NAT technologies rely on two layers of NAT, one in your home (in a home gateway device), and one within a the service provider's network that usually shares a single IPv4 address across possibly hundreds of customers or more. Using NAT presents many challenges compared to not using NAT, as your traffic must traverse a NAT device before going to the destination and back. In addition, we believe those two layers of NAT will break a number of applications that are important to our customers.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 09

Awesome Video of NY Marathon – See What 47,000 Runners Looks Like!

Amazing video from the NY MTA showing the different waves of runners starting the 2011 New York City Marathon this past Sunday on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Truly incredible to see what 47,000 runners looks like...

Nov 07

Video: Voxeo’s New 60,000 Sq. Ft. Co-Working Office Space Featured in Fox News Interview

Want to see what Voxeo's cool new office space looks like? The 60,000 square feet that also includes "co-working" space for startups?

Kudos to my former colleagues at Voxeo and to CEO Jonathan Taylor in particular for this great video interview on Orlando's Fox 35... check it out:

It's both a very cool space for Voxeons and also a great idea to create a startup incubator right there in the heart of downtown Orlando.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 04

First Update Started To “Migrating Apps to IPv6” – Any Further Feedback?

After moving through a job change and reaching a steady state with a family medical issue, I’ve finally got some cycles ahead of me to get back to something I’ve wanted to do for several months now… get an update out to this book!

I’m currently writing more text and am looking to do the following to the book in this update:

  1. Add a few more graphics to illustrate points, particularly the “happy eyeballs” concept.
  2. Expand coverage of the “privacy address” issue.
  3. Expand on the issues around Carrier-Grade / Large-Scale NAT.
  4. Add in some of the lessons from World IPv6 Day on June 8th.
  5. Add examples / case studies from people who have gone through the migration of their app over to IPv6.

On this final point, I have a few developers who I am contacting to see if they are willing to share their story, but I am definitely open to including more case studies. If you have migrated one of your applications to work on IPv6, I’d love to hear from you.

Beyond this list, do any of you have other points you would like to see included in the book? Or areas in the book that you would like to see expanded?

Please either leave a comment here or drop me an email to let me know. Thanks!

I’m not sure of the exact timeframe but I’m hoping to get an update out by the end of November.

P.S. Note that any of you who bought the ebook directly from O’Reilly will be automatically notified when the new version is published online.

Nov 04

My Report into For Immediate Release Podcast #623 – Oct 31, 2011

In this week's For Immediate Release episode #623, my report covered:

And if you listened to the very end of my report you would have heard an additional contribution from a "helper". :-)

You can, of course, listen to the episode online now.

Nov 03

Video: Google’s Matt Cutts on "Cloaking" and Why It Is Bad

Matt Cutts at Google recently posted this useful video explaining what "cloaking" is ... and why it is bad for both the user experience and also for SEO / search engine results. He also explains how cloaking is different from providing distinct content for mobile audiences versus regular visitors.

I'll admit that I've never had enough interest in "gaming" Google to go to the desperate measure of this kind of cloaking... but obviously people are out there and doing it:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either: