Skip to content

Category Archives: Insights

Net Neutrality


What is net neutrality?

You can read details here, on Wikipedia. In a
nutshell,

Network Neutrality — or "Net Neutrality" for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.

Net Neutrality ensures that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It's why the Internet has become an unrivaled environment for open communications, civic involvement and free speech.


Breaching network neutrality affects everyone - corporations, small business owners, students - everyone using the Internet. The internet has turned into a innovative medium for communicating to people. All was well till now, cause the telecommunication industry was doing its job - transferring bits from point A to point B. And it has done that job well.

However, now the telecommunications industry is trying to dictate what content the user can access. How you ask?

For example, say you want to use your favorite service A. Your ISP offers/has a financial incentive from service B. Guess which service your ISP would route you through?

As predicted by Eben Moglen, the fight with the telecommunications industry has begun.

Take initiative: Act now, Save the Net

Update: I did some more reading online. AT & T’s Ed Whitacre wants consumers and content providers to pay for use of his network. “The Internet can’t be free … for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts.”

Reply: The reason the telecommunications industry exists is because the content providers exist. and vice versa. Net Neutrality is the reason why both are able to exist, in a symbiotic relationship. Breaking network neutrality will have disastrous consequences to us, the end users.
Posted 17 May 2006 † robotgeek § ‡ Comments (3) °

Free Software


Even if you are not a geek, please go on and read this blog post. Or atleast look at the links on the bottom of the post, especially the "Digital Imprimatur" one.

Since I spend so much time on Free Software, and it's a topic very close to my heart, I though I should post my thoughts (again) about Free Software. Not Open Source, but Free Software. The end product might be the same, but the philosophies are wide apart. The Free Software movement aims to preserve the users freedom, the Open Source movement considers it to be superlative method of developing code(where more eyes see less bugs).

I love the freedom it has given me. If I want to modify something to my preference, the source code is out there. And yes, I have done it on more than one occasion.

I love that I can file bugs on packages, talk directly to the guy/team who has written the program and get it fixed. This works because the programmer who has written the code has written cause he likes what he is doing. Try doing this with your favorite proprietary software company. I bet that you will be put on hold.

I love the fact it 'just works'. This might be a suprising claim, but it has been that way for me. It was not that way initially, but like all Free Software, it's bound to get better with time as more people join the movement. For instance, Ubuntu works with my mac ibook very nicely. Almost everything works just as it should, discounting proprietary formats which I do not use.

I love it that anyone can translate it to his/her language. This might not be a very important thing for you, but remember that English is not the only language in the world, and there are others too. Imagine if farmers/others in India/other could get on the internet and use it their betterment, all without having to learn English.

I love the fact that my data is in a open standard (either text or xml), not a proprietary closed format for which I have to upgrade my application and be locked into their proprietary formats forever. For example, Word/Pro-E files (Most of these get reverse engineered since).

I love the fact that Free Software has started a new free culture, where we can share our code, ideas, writing.

I hope that this goes on to develop into a culture where anyone can access knowledge of any kind, without restrictions placed on it. A good starting point is the MIT Open Courseware, where you don't pay for the information, but for the privilege of sitting in a MIT class room, and getting taught by the teachers.

I hope that we soon get open hardware standards so that I can mess with the hardware I paid good money for. This would make projects like Broadcom Reverse Engineering unnecessary. Already companies like Atheros and Ralink have implemented this, and also sun with it's Open Sparc project.

All the above talk must have led you to wonder. What happens to proprietary software companies? This part I haven't really thought through, at least to make reasonable conclusions. One options could be supporting software, or a feature based product (you pay for what you want). The other ugly option is that they will implement stuff like DRM, and TPM to lock you in. See the Digital Primartur link below.

We do live in interesting times.

Read More
Posted 11 February 2006 † robotgeek § Free software ‡ Comments (1) °

2005: The year that was

Reflections on the year gone by.

Posted 16 January 2006 † robotgeek § ‡ Comments (3) °

Democracy,Science and more

The problem with a democracy is that right and wrong are not two fixed things. They are defined by what the majority thinks. This, is a flaw in democracy.
With that bit of background information, I would point you out to the following articles in MSNBC and the Washington Post on [...]

Posted 09 November 2005 † robotgeek § ‡ Comments (7) °

Things which I can’t understand scare me

from-the-d’oh-dept.

Posted 10 July 2005 † robotgeek § Geek Speak § Pseudo-Random ‡ Comments (0) °