Occam’s Razor

The synergy of RSS to Email

Four and a half years ago, I wrote about this new cool technology called RSS. Actually, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was hardly new in December 2003. It was introduced by Netscape in 1999 as “RDF Site Summary”. This original version is now quaintly referred to as RSS 0.91.

The problem in 2003 was that RSS had not caught on. Who really wants to manually check the same web sites periodically for new content when a solution like RSS was available? It took a couple trillion web clicks but eventually users realized this was stupid and inefficient. Instead, web savvy people like me were noisily petitioning content providers to create RSS feeds. Eventually web publishers took notice. They realized the cost of implementation was relatively small, the underlying XML dirt simple to generate and that it could expand their market for minimal cost. Now, it is hard to find any web content provider without news feeds. This blog, for example, is accessible in two RSS formats as well as the Atom 1.0 syndication format. According to Feedburner, approximately thirty of you access my blog via my RSS feed. Thanks for subscribing, by the way.

So RSS has caught on to the point where it is widely available, but it is still not as widely used as it should be. Only about 10% of us web surfers regularly fetch web content through news feeds. I can only speculate on why this is so. I know I often prefer the rich content available on a web site to the relatively dry text that comes through with RSS. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox let you subscribe to a site’s news feed with a couple clicks, providing the site adds appropriate tags to its HTML.

Syndication formats like RSS and Atom thus serve a different purpose than a browser. We visit web sites for the relative ease of finding the depth of information at a site. We subscribe to news feeds because we want its regular content on a small range of specialized topics. Those of us who are religious about reading content via a newsreader know that it is very efficient at aggregating feeds for us. Yet it lacks the breadth of information that is available on the web site. A newsreader does not facilitate curiosity the way a browser does.

Many of us would probably like to subscribe to hundreds of news sources but really do not have time to read all of them, even with the efficiency built into a newsreader. For example, there may be a site that you only want to read quarterly. In addition, these sites may have pertinent information, but much of it may be irrelevant to our needs.

The problems with email are well known. Given the overwhelming amount of spam, it is hard to legitimate email to make it to your inbox. There is never any assurance that you have received all email sent to you. More email than you think gets lost, but much of it probably ends up in spam folders because spam filters generate too many false positives. As dreadful as missing an important email is to us, many of us fear the alternative even more: having to sift through the dozens or hundreds of spam emails we would get daily if we turned off our spam filters.

I have been wondering if RSS might be an effective solution to broadcasting certain kinds of information. Generally you do not have to worry about an RSS feed containing spam, since you typically verify that the site is legitimate by visiting the site. Once you know it is legitimate, you then can add its RSS feed. However, as I noted, unless you are meticulous about using your newsreader on a daily basis, it is easy to lose these timely notifications.

For those feeds where I need certain information, but only sporadically, it would be nice to get an email with the feed content when the feed changes, or when certain keywords appear in the feed. Moreover, when I no longer need to receive a feed from a particular source, it would be nice to have a fast way of unsubscribing from the feed.

As usual, industry is way ahead of me. A simple Google search eventually led me to the RSSReaderLive site, which I have been testing out. You could also choose one of the many other alternatives out there. Among them are RSSFWD, SendMeRSS, and FeedBlitz. FeedBurner also has a notification service. Using RSSReaderLive, the only thing I had to remember is to program my spam filter to let all emails from it go into my inbox automatically. I just have to hope that the email will not end up dropped in some digital bit bucket on its way to my inbox.

As you might expect these services are not necessarily free. You generally have to either pay a small fee for the service or deal with ads in the email. I hope that email clients will get smarter and start polling RSS feeds for you automatically, and include feed items as emails in your inbox. For those who like to diddle with their PCs, there are programs like rss2email that you can install that will act as an RSS to email proxy for you.

I like it when a confluence of standard web technologies (email, the web and newsfeeds) can be leveraged together to solve a problem like this, minor though it may be. It neatly solves the timely broadcast notification dilemma in a way that works for both content providers and consumers.

May 20th, 2008 at 06:25pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

A bundle of confusion

If you own a horse, you have to let it run regularly. If you own a sports car, you should take it on a racetrack occasionally for the pleasure of being smashed into your seat while you accelerate. Similarly, if you have a high definition television (HDTV), you do not buy it to watch interlaced analog TV signals with only 473 lines of resolution. You want content that will make you appreciate the fact you just spent $699 on a high definition TV.

That is how much we paid for our HDTV. It is an Olevia 37 inch HDTV that comes with more ports and options than we will ever use. Our TV room is small but despite its relatively modest screen size, it still seems enormous to us. The TV it is replacing worked perfectly fine. It is now sitting in our basement queued for a likely donation. While only about seven years old, it was doomed soon after it was bought. The FCC declared that on February 19, 2009 TVs like ours will be obsolete unless we buy a conversion box. Even if we did our picture quality would not have been improved. Neighbors would laugh at us for being so 20th century.

Both our cable provider (Cox Communications) and our phone company (Verizon) have spent years tempting us with their all-digital services. We have our Internet and cable TV service with Cox and an old-fashioned POTS line with Verizon. On a typical month, I pay Cox $93 and Verizon $32. Both Cox and Verizon have been luring us with bundled services. If we bundled all our communications needs with them, we were told, we could save some money.

Verizon has its fiber optic FiOS service. In addition to providing high-speed Internet access, you can also receive a lot of other content, including their version of movies on demand. Cox offers essentially these same services for roughly the same price. How do I know? Well, it is hard to tell. Masters of voodoo marketing are putting together their sales brochures. They excel in obfuscation. Yet they refuse to leave me alone. Roughly once a week I get a solicitation from each company. Typically, they come in the mail, but now and then, they also come attached to my door handle. Verizon has lately been very uppity, sending salespersons to my door to pitch their FiOS service. That was one strike against them; I hate door-to-door salespersons and by implication any company that would send me one. Moreover, I have an unlisted phone number. You would think Verizon would take this as a signal not to call me. You would be wrong. They have given me several calls pitching FiOS. Cox at least has neither knocked on my door nor solicited me over the telephone.

Now that we are HDTV owners it was time to consider their various offerings. As we soon discovered, analog TV on a HDTV looks ridiculous. Either much of the screen is black or if your TV is fancy like ours is, you can put it in a zoom mode. The screen fills up, but suddenly the picture looks fuzzy.

Both Verizon and Cox had mid-tier bundled service packages for $99.99 a month that combined telephone, digital TV and Internet service. At $99.99 a month, either looked like a good deal. Either deal appeared to be about $25 less than we were currently paying. The question became which one to choose? Which was better?

Naturally, both providers claimed they had a superior network, superior content and lower prices. Both though delight in obfuscating the consumer’s real costs. It is almost impossible to determine what you are actually buying and how much the service will cost you. I spent a couple hours on Verizon’s site trying to pick through the details of their bundles. Eventually I gave up. There is probably no way to know for sure without hiring a lawyer to decipher the fine print. Verizon though did have three strikes against them. First, they annoyed me by having salespersons knock on my door and call me unsolicited on the phone. Second, was their stance on network neutrality. Third and probably most importantly, like with their cell phone service if you select one of their bundles they want to lock you in for a couple years. I mean for such a steal as they are giving you they have to make up the difference somehow! I am old fashioned enough to think that if their service is that great it will be obvious to me, so I should not have to be locked into it.

Cox Communications had a few strikes against them too. About a year ago, I inquired about one of their bundles. I asked many questions and I did not like what I heard. I politely said no thanks, not at this time. A few days later one of their digital receivers arrived on my doorstep. That raised my dander. A phone call confirmed that I had not subscribed to their bundle. However, I still had to take an hour out of my life to return the box they sent me. They would not pick it up.

Nevertheless, between their latest brochure, reading their web site and a long conversation on the phone with their sales office, I was able to get a sense of what my bundle would actually cost me. Still, the devil is in the details. Did their $99.99 a month bundle include the rental cost of their digital receiver? Negatory. That was $4.50 a month, so the bundle was really $104.49. Did it include any HD channels? No except for the local HD broadcast signals. However, they did offer 31 HD channels. If I wanted them on top of our digital cable, they were $1.44 a month. What is this free digital tier that comes with the bundle? Apparently, the ones listed in the brochure were incorrect, but I could get the equivalent of their Variety Tier. This is what my wife wanted because she wants to see the latest Torchwood episodes on BBC America. Would there be an installation charge? Not if I install the digital receiver myself. They have to come out to the house to install the telephone interface, but there is no charge for that. Can I get extended local long distance like I have with Verizon? In other words, can I call my father who lives across the Potomac River toll free? No, but you can call the District of Columbia for free. Oh, and to get the bundle you have to choose Cox as your local long distance, long distance and international provider. Long distance rates are fifteen cents a minute, or more than three times what I pay Pioneer Telephone, my current long distance provider. However, this is not much of an issue since we hardly ever call long distance. We do email instead. Moreover, to maintain my unpublished telephone number I have to cough up another $1.71 a month. All totaled with taxes my $99.99 a month bundle would cost me $123.09. Hey, but at least I will only have to cut one check.

In short, I may save a few bucks a month but I will not be supplementing my retirement income with their fabulous bundled savings. On the plus side, we will no longer be stuck with analog TV signals. Digital signals will no longer be interlaced. The picture on these channels will not make them much bigger, but will make the picture smoother. Their 31 HD channels are expected to double soon and there will be no extra fee. We will get channels we do not get now, but that does not mean we are likely to watch them. In addition, as best I can tell I am not locked into a two-year contract.

In fact, the differences between Cox and Verizon are rather marginal, but I chose to go with Cox for these reasons. I may end up regretting my choice. Their eight-hour battery will keep my landline working during a power outage, but what if the outage lasts nine hours? While many of our TV channels will soon be in HD, I am still not sure I will watch any more TV. I largely gave up TV years ago. On the other hand, our daughter will be pleased.

Our next purchase will probably be a Bluetooth compatible DVD player. Apparently, regular DVDs are not good enough for a modern HDTV, which means that we will want to buy some of our favorite DVDs again so we can have a more proper theatrical experience.

Well, someone has to pull this country out of recession.

March 18th, 2008 at 08:40pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

Google hits another home run with Google Analytics

At least a few of the best things in life are actually free. For web site owners like me who want useful statistics on our visitors but do not want to pay for it (in either money, time or advertising) there is a slick solution: Google Analytics.

Until Google Analytics, I had mediocre statistical solutions. I monitor my site with the free versions of SiteMeter and StatCounter. However, both services offer only limited free features. Both allow you to see detailed information on your last hundred page views only. If you want more information, you need to take out your charge card.

On the too much information side, my web server of course logs every hit for all of my sites. My web host like most provides access to free Awstats reports. It does a nice job of summarizing the data in my web logs. However, the information tends to be about a day old. Moreover, since it logs everything it provides statistics that, while valid, are not always terribly meaningful. For example, I get many hits on my RSS and Atom feed links. Most of these are just machines polling my server at periodic intervals. It does not necessarily mean that someone is actually reading my content. In addition, I am too lazy to try to figure out how to tune my Apache web server and Awstats configuration files to split my three domains into separate reports. However, the price of Awstats cannot be beat, and it does give me a picture of the total volume of traffic my site is getting.

What I really care about are those who are actively reading content. SiteMeter provided a close approximation. I could look at its statistics, add in a weighting factor for my newsfeed hits and get an overall picture. Still, without paying for it I had no way to ask questions such as, “Which entry was most popular last month?” and “What search words bring the most people to my site?”

Enter Google Analytics, Google’s free web site statistics package. Finally, I have a convenient way to dig down and see the relevant information I am looking for without having to pay for it or maintain it. I also have a way to get detailed statistics beyond the last one hundred page views. Google provides it as a free service to all but the largest web sites. It is designed to work with your Google Adwords account. However, you do not need to have a Google Adwords account to use Google Analytics.

While not a perfect package, it is slick. First, its drawbacks. It is not as easy to add the metering code to your web pages as it is with SiteMeter or StatCounter. You will need to dig through your web site’s templates and add the appropriate code in the HTML headers and ask it to validate each site. Second, by default you do not get up to the minute information. Google Analytics defaults to showing you statistics through the previous day. Current information is there but you have to change your date range. Third, it cannot track your non-browser related hits. This is good and bad because much of it you would want to ignore anyhow (search engine robots come to mine). Others, like relevant hits on your newfeeds, would be useful. Fourth, it would be nice if it had an API (application programming interface). I suspect this will come soon. With an API, Sitemeter-like features such as counters that appear on your web pages could be implemented. (Some Wordpress plug-in authors have already done some clever things.)

With these downsides though, look at what you get. First, there is no money or advertising. Second, it has a super-slick user interface built on top of Flash technology. It allows easy customization of your Google Analytics reports simply by dragging and dropping widgets. You can customize your dashboard to show your relevant statistics. You can also drill down to get relevant statistics easily, either by clicking on the link or by placing your mouse cursor over the relevant items on the graphics. Mouse-over dialog boxes tell you much relevant information without even needing to click. Move easily from one domain to another by selecting the domain from the selection list. Change the date criteria easily by opening up the date control and highlighting the dates you want.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of analytical information. Some of it, while relevant, can be hard to understand. What is a bounce rate anyhow? Convenient links provide more details. Data is organized into four major areas: visitor information, traffic content, sources and goals. The goals area is most useful if you are using their Google Adwords service. With it, you fine-tune your Google Adwords campaigns to help you bring in more traffic. This is where Google makes its money. If by offering you free analytics it can persuade you to open a Google Adwords account, or use it more frequently or effectively, it is good for their bottom line as well as yours.

I wish Google Analytics had a mode that allowed the public to see my statistics too. If it did, it would more resemble SiteMeter and StatCounter’s features. Perhaps this will come in some future version.

I have a feeling that Google Analytic’s free service is worrying SiteMeter, StatCounter and similar services. I got a recent notice from SiteMeter saying they will be rolling out an upgraded statistics package soon. With Google nipping at its heels, I would not be surprised if it offered expanded free services.

If you have been using SiteMeter and similar services, I think you owe it to yourself to add Google Analytics metering too.

December 9th, 2007 at 09:41pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

Why KML may revolutionize the world

Almost two years ago, I gushed about Google Earth. Two years later, this product from the engineers at Google continues to amaze and astound many of us, particularly those of us who are geography geeks. I thought at the time (and still think it is true) that Google Earth is a revolutionary product, every bit as significant as the web browser. Two years later, I am beginning to understand that its underpinnings, something called KML, has the potential to fundamentally change the world as we know it.

Scott McNealy the Chairman of the Board of Sun Computers said some ten years ago, "The network is the computer". This is now their corporate motto. Scott was ahead of his time, but in my opinion, the network did not become the computer until 2005 when Google Earth was released. Here at last was a killer application wherein the network really was the computer. Google Earth could not work at all without the ubiquity of the Internet. It also required Google’s very big and very fast pipes to the Internet. Nor could it exist on computers in somebody’s basement. The staggering amount of imagery rendered by Google Earth was measured in the terabytes. To serve all that imagery to so many clients simultaneously required very big and redundant computer centers. In short, it required the sort of infrastructure that only a few companies such as Google could provide. It also needed software that allowed easy access to geographical data. This was the Google Earth program that you installed on your computer. However, the Google Earth program was useless without the network infrastructure. The network was the computer indeed.

Google assembled and licensed a staggering amount of surface imagery of our planet. Much of the low-resolution imagery was provided free of charge by my employer, the U.S. Geological Survey. Google was also astute enough to realize that people had to have an easy way to describe points on the earth, link those points to URLs, describe geographical boundaries, features on the earth, and topics of interest. Creating this dataset was too big a job even for Google. However, if given the right tools people could describe these geographical points of interest themselves. The trick was to describe these geographical features in a way that Google Earth could render. Google, rather than reinventing the wheel, looked at what was out there. It settled on KML, or Keyhole Markup Language as the geographic markup language that Google Earth would render. (In time, Google bought Keyhole, which was in the digital imagery collection business, and which invented KML.)

If you are a geek like me, KML is just an instance of an XML schema. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a platform neutral way of sharing data along with its meaning. HTML (the markup language used to describe web pages like this), or rather its modern manifestation called XHTML, is also an instance of an XML schema.

The important thing to understand about XML and KML is that you do not have to be a rocket scientist to write either of them. You can do it in a text editor if so inclined. You just have to know the schema, which amounts to the rules to be followed to mark up data for a particular kind of use. Thanks to the popularity of Google Earth, KML has become a de facto standard for describing many kinds of geographic data. There is now a very large community of KML enthusiasts out there. Many of them are busy marking up their own unique geographic content in KML. Load someone’s KML file into Google Earth and you too can show your friends the precise location of things that interest you, like Aunt Martha’s grave or your favorite hiking trail.

Google Earth then is really nothing more than a rendering engine for geographical information described in a KML syntax. In the same way that HTML describes how web pages should be presented by a web browser, KML describes how applications can describe geographic data. In addition, just as Mosaic (which quickly morphed into Netscape) became the first popular web browser, the Google Earth software just happened to be the first application for rendering geographic data described in KML. Among those now providing competition for the Google Earth program are World Wind and Geoportal.

When you innovate as fast as Google, it is hard to get ahead of them. While you may not have tried Google Earth, you are probably familiar with Google Maps. With Google Maps, you only need a web browser but you still have an amazing ability to intuitively examine the earth and find points of interest. Google Maps of course has competition too, principally from Yahoo Maps and MapQuest.

There is no question that Google Earth is ultra slick. Web browsers are ubiquitous but relatively unsophisticated. Until Web 2.0’s vision is realized, we will continue to need to download and install specialized software for many applications. This places a limitation on KML because to use it effectively you need to install a sophisticated program on your desktop computer.

If the network is the computer then Google Maps itself is really just a mapping application rendered by a web browser. Mashup sites like Frappr allow you to overlay your points of interest to you on top of Google Maps. What if a web mapping sites like Google Maps could display a user provided KML data source? Then there would be nothing to install and you could easily see the location of Aunt Martha’s grave using a browser.

As I discovered yesterday, you can now do this with Google Maps. In its search box, just point it to a web accessible KML file and it will render those points in Google Maps. (If you know the secret, you can pass the KML file as a URL parameter.) To me this is very exciting. I manage this big web site for the USGS. For years, we have been wanting to add a scalable mapping application to our site. It is not that it cannot be done, it is just that providing an interface like Google Earth is hard to do, particularly when your agency is resource constrained, as ours is. We are still hoping to roll our own scalable mapping interface one of these days.

Fortunately, we USGSers in the water business were at least astute enough a year or so back to figure out that we could create KML files that describe the locations of some of our stream gauging stations. You can find some of them here. This was not particularly hard for us to do because we know the exact latitude and longitude of these stations. Moreover, marking up KML is simple. Now you can use Google Earth to find the location of our gauging stations. In addition, the clever folks in our Waterwatch area enhanced the KML to show more than just location data, but actual useful information. They figured out a way to show how current stream flow conditions compare with historical periods of record. You can get a sense at a glance from color-coded dots in Google Earth just how much water is flowing. Black dots, for example, mean the stream gauge is at an all time high for its measured period of record.

All this is great if you have Google Earth, but many will not take the time to download the software. That is why being able to render KML in Google Maps is to me quite exciting. For example, try this link and you can see USGS stream gauges for the state of Virginia where I live. The color-coded dots give an intuitive "at a glance" sense of just how much water is flowing across the state. Moreover, you can zoom in, zoom out, pan and add road and satellite imagery too.

You may find this mildly interesting, but unless you are a hydrologist or a flood forecaster this information is probably only of passing interest. Suffice to say that USGS is not alone in providing data in KML. The amount of data provided in KML is truly voluminous.

Since it appears that KML can be married ubiquitously to a web browser, what is most amazing is what this says about the potential future of KML. Since KML is just an instance of XML, it is extensible. This means that KML can be married with and include all sorts of other kinds of data. Sources of data are everywhere. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau has huge amounts of demographic information about us and much of it could be marked up with KML. If these data sources would publish their data in KML, not only could they display their data on web sites like Google Maps, but also it could push the development of platform independent KML analytic tools. I can see web sites or open source tools that will collect KML from all sorts of locations and do data mining for you, finding interesting and hitherto unseen connections for your consideration. The relevant information could then be exported as KML, displayed, stored and most importantly shared.

Therefore, KML has the potential to foster data analysis for the masses, allowing us each to become unique assemblers of new knowledge by gleaning onto lots of other sources of data, but letting our computers find new and relevant patterns between the data.

Whether my vision will be realized remains to be seen. I would be very surprised if others are not already working to turn my vision into a reality. If this can be done then the simple Google Earth tool may one day be seen as something akin to Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, bringing us to the shores of a new land of knowledge that for now is hard to fathom, but whose realization may now well be within our grasp.

May 25th, 2007 at 11:17pm Posted by Mark | Technology | 2 comments

.xxx marks the spot

Ever hear of ICANN? Unless you are an Internet geek, you probably have not. ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It is not a great acronym, but its obscurity may be something of a blessing, because ICANN’s work can sometimes be controversial.

Its more prosaic work involves establishing and overseeing rules to ensure that two people cannot offer the same domain on the Internet. They also authorize new “top-level domains”. These are the .com, .net and .org domains on the Internet that we have all come to love.

Most of these top-level domains are actually country codes, like .uk for United Kingdom. The bulk of web traffic though goes to those three letter top-level domains, .com and the like. Occasionally ICANN will approve a new top-level domain. I am glad they did. Some years back they approved the .info top-level domain, which I grabbed for my domain.

ICANN has proven to be miserly in approving new top-level domains. Maybe the paperwork is too much of a hassle. Some new generic top-level domains have been squeezed out over the last few years. In addition to .info, these include some you may not have heard about including .travel and .mobi (for mobile products and services). Many others have gone down ICANN’s bit bucket.

For example, there is the .xxx domain, first proposed back in 2000. As the name implies, it is to be used as a logical domain for sexually explicit content. If news reports are to be believed, my government twisted arms at ICANN to ensure this latest proposal got canned too. Last Friday the proposal was rejected by ICANN for the third time. Once more ICANN found dubious reasons for rejecting the .xxx top-level domain. You can read the surprisingly dry details here.

One of the more curious arguments ICANN gave in rejecting the application by ICM Registry, which wants to become the registrar of all things smutty, is that it avoided their “concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community.” I am speculating here, but I think ICANN was expecting that any .xxx server should have a way to detect whether someone connecting to it was doing so legally. If that was its concern, it is an unreasonably high bar to meet. The Internet is inherently an open medium and authentication over the internet is costly, intrusive and technically challenging. This is no way to stimulate Internet commerce, which is what .xxx domains are about more than sex. Besides, if we wanted a proprietary and managed network, we would all be subscribing to AOL.

However, any site with a .xxx top-level domain should tell the average user plenty. It should tell parents of small children, for example, that they could easily block a lot of smut on the internet with a simple software configuration.

Had the .xxx domain gone through, those adult web site owners who chose not to get a .xxx domain would have been under no compulsion to get one. On the other hand, many adult web site owners would prefer to host under a .xxx domain. Their rationale is not hard to figure out. Using a .xxx domain would shield them from a lot of potential liability. If some child is surfing a .xxx domain, it’s quite clear that they are not their by mistake and Mom and Dad were asleep at the switch. In addition, it gives a clear message to potential customers what kind of business they are in. Not many people would accidentally surf to a .xxx domain.

Furthermore, what is wrong with consenting adults having their own zone on the internet for sexually explicit content? That such content is all mixed up now simply adds to the likelihood that someone will inadvertently see pornography on the Internet. There is no way to reliably determine whether a site is an adult web site without viewing it. There is no way for a computer to make an accurate judgment on whether an image contains sexual content.

A .xxx top-level domain should be a no-brainer. I suspect the real reason why the .xxx domain was rejected for the third time had more to do with certain people’s discomfort with human sexuality in general than anything else. I see parallels with our War on Drugs. Just as it seems politically impossible to declare the interdiction strategy in War on Drugs a lost cause, it seems politically impossible to agree that the Internet needs a .xxx domain. Because to admit that we need a .xxx domain implies that smut cannot be controlled on the Internet and that most humans enjoy pornography.

The reality of course is that smut cannot be controlled on the Internet, except through monitoring by local web hosts. With millions of domains, it is impractical to monitor every domain out there. A .xxx domain though would likely put a lot of peer pressure on the adult industry. In addition to likely giving them additional legal cover it would be seen as the responsible thing for purveyors of adult materials to do. “I’m a good Netizen. My sex site is on a .xxx domain. This means everyone knows what kind of content I offer. If they don’t want to see my stuff, I am easily avoided. I am protecting kids too.” I suspect over time, providing the top-level domain was administered impartially, most adult sites would migrate to a .xxx domain.

Admittedly, if it hit critical mass there would be the temptation to close the top-level domain down and thereby relieve the Internet of pornography. Would the smut problem on the Internet then be solved? This would be unlikely. It would be a simple matter to move smut back into .com domains again. Just because you can zone a red light district in your town, does not mean you can enforce it on the Internet. It is like passing a law that no one may send spam. We have these already and you can see how effective those laws have been.

Generally, if you take three strikes then you are out. ICM has not quite thrown in the towel. They are planning to sue the United States government, whom they alleged illegally pressured ICANN on the issue. None other than ICANN board member Susan Crawford suggested the same thing in her blog.

Smut is not going away. Now that we have the Internet, smut simply found a modern means of delivery. Smut predated the written word. We will carry it with us until the moment our species becomes extinct. Just as we cannot win the War on Drugs through interdiction, neither can we eradicate internet pornography through force of law and the power of public opinion. All we can do is acknowledge what we cannot change and change what we can. A .xxx top-level domain is one of the few tools in our Internet toolbox that can actually scope down the problem.

The only way to truly fix Internet pornography is to get rid of the Internet, which is not possible anyhow. Therefore, we must live with it. If we cannot stop people from using narcotics illegally, doesn’t it make sense to decriminalize its possession and tax it instead? Then why not use the same strategy with adult web site operators? Let adult domains hang out in their own .xxx top-level domain. Let the registrar collect a modest fee above other domains, and use it to fund more enlightening activities.

Perhaps some of the money could be used to bring the Internet to developing countries. If so then perhaps there would be some good come from smut after all.

April 2nd, 2007 at 09:13pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

SiteMeter vs. StatCounter: a comparison

As you may have noticed, I use SiteMeter to monitor traffic on this blog. I chose SiteMeter about three years ago because it had name recognition and everyone else seemed to be using it. As I mentioned in this entry on SiteMeter, its hit count is imprecise at best. This is because it can really only monitor traffic on your site served as web pages. (That is why I also use Feedreader for those who prefer to use newsreaders, and offer users the option to subscribe to receive my entries via email.) Moreover, it will not catch all your traffic served as web pages. A surfer may elect to turn off Javascript, not to display any images, or hide details about themselves. There is no guarantee that the SiteMeter’s code in your web pages will successfully report back to SiteMeter. We all get “page not found” errors regularly. A similar error can happen when the SiteMeter code is executed, except it is less likely to be noticed. Even if the tracking data reaches SiteMeter, there is no guarantee that it will actually be recorded in their log. SiteMeter is not alone. Any service like SiteMeter suffers similar limitations.

The basic SiteMeter service is free. It shows detailed statistics for only the last 100 page views. Nevertheless, it suffices to give you an idea of your site’s traffic. Its reports may not be comprehensive, but at least the information is instantly available and up to the minute. If you have to depend on log analysis tools that come from your web host (typically Awstats) your information will be up to 24 hours old.

So SiteMeter mostly works, even if it is imprecise and occasionally slow. It satisfies my curiosity to know how heavily trafficked my blog is and if a particular entry is spurring any interest. Lately though, SiteMeter has been failing me. My statistics are collected on their sm1 server. It experienced problems on March 3rd and SiteMeter is still trying to recover. (It looks like they may lose all my historical data.) As a result, I have not been able to get my daily buzz from examining my metadata.

SiteMeter will probably get their act back together in time. In the interim, I decided to try a similar service. With a little Googling, I found StatCounter. I have been running it for a few days. I am trying to decide if I like it better than SiteMeter. Like SiteMeter, its free version limits detailed information to the last 100 page views.

SiteMeter takes you right to the pay dirt. You are instantly shown a statistics page showing things like the number total visits and page views, along with today’s total number of visits and page views. StatCounter has the same information, but it makes you dig for it, and you frequently have to log in first. This adds a lot of unnecessary clicks and keystrokes. However, StatCounter’s summary page shows more information and includes both graphical and textual statistics on the same page, including textual page and visit counts. SiteMeter has this information in graphs only.

SiteMeter has a convenient “who’s on” link that tells you how many visitors you have had over the last X minutes, as well as some high level details about each visit. (You get to configure the value. The “who’s on” feature is misleading. The World Wide Web is inherently stateless, so there is no way to really know if someone is actually viewing your page at a given moment.) StatCounter has essentially three variations of this report, but with more detail than you probably want. Nor is it quite a “who’s on” feature because you cannot limit the recent visitors or page views to a given time period. Instead, you have to pick one of the “recent” reports.

SiteMeter has a traffic prediction feature. Based on your current traffic it will infer how many page view and visits you will get over the next hour, day, week or month. StatCounter has no such feature.

SiteMeter allows you to view visitors by details, referrals, world map (it places dots on a world map for recent visitors), location, entry pages and exit pages. StatCounter offers similar features but again provides more detail. SiteMeter does offer an out clicks feature. This can be quite useful. Unfortunately, StatCounter does not offer it.

SiteMeter offers handy graphics showing traffic by month, week, day and hour. StatCounter has the same information, but it also shows quarterly traffic. In addition, it provides the exact numbers, rather than just a graph. However, it is harder to find these graphics. You have to select the Summary option, and then look for the links.

SiteMeter offers some “navigation trends” like visit depth and daily durations, but only as graphics. StatCounter has nothing similar. SiteMeter can track usage by continents, countries, distance and time zone. StatCounter cannot do continents or time zones, but instead offers state/region statistics. (These statistics are likely meaningless, since the web host may be in a hosting center in Georgia, but the user may actually be in Virginia.) SiteMeter tracks visitors by their language, operating system, domain and organization. StatCounter does not track language but does a better job of tracking by domain. Both can track browser share, Javascript capability and monitor resolution. Unlike SiteMeter, StatCounter cannot track color depth.

Overall SiteMeter offers more ease of use, but fewer details and features. Stat Counter does offer some unique features. These include reports over date ranges, area graphs, better drill down features, tracking by search engine, icon hiding, export features and IP labeling. It also offers information on how many visitors are returning, a feature I find quite useful. Its recent visitor map is actually a Google Maps mash up, which is more useful and navigable than SiteMeter’s service. These extra features make it more cumbersome to use and navigate. For many people it will be TMI (too much information).

I cannot speak to StatCounter’s reliability and accuracy compared with SiteMeter’s. To be fair to SiteMeter, my recent problems have been the first in three years that have been severe. Its other past problems were annoying, but considering the price, I could live with them. If I do end up losing all my historical statistics, I will be upset with SiteMeter, since I will have lost the yearly history that shows traffic growth for this blog.

If you value simplicity, SiteMeter is the better service. SiteMeter’s categorized links makes it much easier to navigate to essential information. If you value depth of information, StatCounter is probably the better choice, even though its screens are often unnecessarily busy. Either solution is free with upgrade options if you want to track details for more than the last 100 page views, so it does not hurt to add code for both. Now that I have started using StatCounter, I will continue to use it. However, I will not get rid of SiteMeter either. Both have their uses. Some months of experiencing both side by side will give me a better appreciation for the features of each.

March 15th, 2007 at 09:56pm Posted by Mark | Technology | one comment

Rehosted

This will be a short entry. My writing here lately has been constrained because (a) I have been busy at work (b) having Google abandon my blog has made it more difficult to get inspired (c) I have been busy doing phpBB modifications work for clients and (d) I have been up to my armpits with rehosting issues.

Thankfully, the rehosting issue is finally solved. I went through a tedious process of moving over my two phpBB message boards (Oak Hill Virginia Online and The Potomac Tavern) but the last domain, this blog, has proven daunting. Thankfully with a help from my friend Jim Goldbloom, calls to the tech support people here at westhost.com, and helpful users in their forums, plus a lot of the troubleshooting common sense skills acquired from being in this business 20 years, this blog is now rehosted too.

So hopefully I will feel a bit more inspired, Google will put me back in their index and clients will not need my services as much, so I will have more leisure time to get back to the sober and well crafted blogging I hope I do so well.

Thank you for your patience.

December 6th, 2006 at 08:26pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

Adventures in Virtual Private Servers

About two years ago, I went through a rather arduous adventure in rehosting. I regret to report that after about two years of hosting with site5.com, I have to rehost again.

The rehosting game goes something like this. Things always start out very promising. Your web pages scream back at you. Then, slowly, response time degrades. It is the usual problem: companies try to squeeze a bit more profit by shoving more and more customers on the same server. After all, that is the advantage of virtual hosting. Most of us cannot afford to rent our own dedicated server nor have the traffic to justify it. We want a web presence but do not want to pay for one that guarantees speedy response. In short, we emulate Jack Benny and are proud of it. Nevertheless, we sell ourselves on web host marketing material. I have yet to find a web host that does not claim to offer both fanatical support and low numbers of users on each server. This, of course, is just marketing hype. If some of them are actually honest, they are either charging a lot more or losing money.

Some months back things got to the point where my users were regularly impacted by slow server response times. I complained and things mysteriously got better. I think some other customer using the server was consuming most of the CPU, leaving customers like me high and dry. I assume to make things better they moved that customer to another server. However, over the subsequent months, I got more slowness. “White screens of death” were its principal manifestation. This is what you get from the web server (Apache, in my case) when the script takes too long to execute.

Sniffing around, I read the Apache configuration file on the server. Apache was configured to timeout after 15 seconds. I politely asked site5.com if they could up the limit so my users would not see white screens of death. They politely said no. The problem continued. I politely asked again. Again, they very politely said no. See, everyone on the server would be affected, because the web server’s behavior is shared among all customers. To make the change, the machine would have to be rebooted. Moreover, other customers might not like the longer timeout interval.

Particularly since my hosting contract was coming up for renewal, it sounded like it was time for an amicable divorce. The root problem in this case was that I could not change the Apache web server configuration settings to my liking. I doubt my scripts ran inordinately long. My most CPU intensive applications are on a phpBB forum I run, yet many sites run very busy phpBB boards without a problem. Therefore, most likely the root problem with my performance issues was that my server simply had too many customers using it. The white screens of death suggested this server was just above the waterline, and smart (or better moneyed) customers might want to abandon ship.

The question for me became where to go from here. I could find yet another company offering virtual hosting, sign up with them, and the problem would likely recur. I could contract for a dedicated server, but I simply cannot afford that luxury. The alternative was to use a virtual private server instead.

As a techie, I have been reading about virtual private servers for a few years. Using technology that to me is indistinguishable from magic, it allows one physical server to be used by many customers, yet each customer has complete control over what appears to be their personal server. Yes, you enjoy root level access. Only in reality, the machine is still shared with others. This option costs more than virtual hosting, but costs far less than a dedicated server.

Of course, a virtual private server is subject to the same laws of economics that affect virtual hosting. Too many customers on the same machine are going to slow things down. Performance is still constrained by available CPU, memory and disk space. In addition, running virtual server software takes additional system resources. The difference is that, in theory at least, I can avoid white screens of death by restarting my virtual web server to give it a higher timeout value. When traffic is high my users may have to wait a little while longer, but the web page should eventually come back to them.

I contracted with westhost.com, but wisely chose a one-year contract. As I am discovering there are other downsides to virtual private servers. For one, the control panel is a lot more elementary than other control panels I was used to, like cpanel. For example, there is no web application to help program cron jobs. (Cron is an operating system utility that allows you to schedule programs to run at certain times of day automatically.) You have to program cron jobs the old-fashioned way: from the command line. At the moment, this is a problem, since this version of cron does not like commands more than 80 characters in length. On the other hand, it is neat to do things like create as many databases on the fly as I like and install any application I want. It is also neat to turn on and off my virtual server, as well as to have real root access.

In short, at least for the moment, those with needs that are more specialized but without deep pockets should consider virtual private servers. In addition, only those who are not afraid to get their hands dirty with Linux should embrace them. I have some of these skills, but could certainly use more. As a professional IT manager, I have staff to do these things for me. Doing it by myself on the side is certainly educational. It gives me an appreciation for what my hard working staff does for me.

It is still a pain to transfer domains, although somewhat less so than it has been. phpMyAdmin creates a nice dump of the database for relocation, but the version on my new host has a 2MB file import limitation. This means to load the data I must run MySQL from the command line.

Dynamic applications are still a pain to rehost, particularly if you have customized them. It still means tar-ring and gzip-ping their files, moving them from machine to machine using FTP, then gunzip-ping and untar-ring them into the right directories. New database instances must be set up and populated. Configuration files must be tweaked. Moreover, all the ancillary third party software used by the application has to be set up again. In this case, I had to install a new instance of phpAdsNew, transfer my advertising database and carefully set it up. When all this is done then you also need to point the domain to the new host, which means your users have to wait while your change propagates across the Internet.

I am still a bit leery about virtual servers. Anything that sounds too good to be true probably is. In addition to being more flexible, virtual private servers also have some great security advantages. For example, there is no way a virus on my server can infect someone else on the same machine, because virtualization technology creates an impenetrable firewall between my virtual world and others. If my virtual server crashes, it does not affect others on the same machine.

Fortunately, I have 30 days to put westhost.com through its paces. If it does not meet my needs, I can get my money back and I still have time to host somewhere else. I can also choose to extend my contract with site5.com and put up with their virtual hosting annoyances.

There is a variant of virtual private servers called virtual dedicated servers. Most web hosts selling VDSes are actually selling VPSes. However, a true VDS will actually ensure that you get your fair share of system resources. That may be my next step if a VPS does not work out. Naturally, a true VDS costs more than a VPS, and so far, sticker shock is keeping me away.

I have two more domains to move over to westhost.com, including this blog. I hope to do it slowly over the next few weeks as I feel more comfortable navigating in this new and strange VPS world.

November 26th, 2006 at 11:38am Posted by Mark | Technology | one comment

Tag! I’m it!

Hosting this blog is not without cost. The direct hosting costs are largely trivial. There is a cost to time, however. It was that investment that made me procrastinate upgrading my blog software (MovableType) from version 3.2 to version 3.3.

Shortly after the new version came out, I did make an attempt to upgrade. Then, as usual, it failed to install for reasons that were mysterious. I did not want to dig into their code or sift through their forums to solve. Last weekend, in an attempt to clear out my inbox, I made one more attempt. After an hour or so of scratching my head I figured out the problem. Suddenly I was running MovableType 3.33.

There are many new features to this upgrade. The most useful is the ability to tag my blog entries. To tag, I must associate relevant words that describe a blog entry. These words are indexed. Once indexed, it allows readers like you to find relevant information across my blog.

Tags are a recent phenomenon, but ideas like it have been tried before. For example, MovableType already supports HTML keywords. I never use them, mainly because search engines ignore them; consequently, they are of no use to my readers. MovableType also supports categorization. I always categorize blog entries. For example, this entry will go into the Technology Category. Categorization though is too broad. Tags are an attempt to allow more refinement. For example, if I discuss Hillary Clinton it will likely end up in one of the Politics categories. However, if I tag “Hillary Clinton” to a blog entry, people who come to my blog who want to read everything I consider relevant about Hillary Clinton can search for entries where I have tagged her name.

There is one problem implementing tags: I have been blogging for nearly four years and none of my entries had been tagged. This means that I have to go back, reread all 580 or so blog entries and enter appropriate tags for each one. The alternative was just to start tagging and forget about tagging previous entries.

The latter idea was attractive, but of course I opted for the former. This is a blog of essays, which means it is primarily a blog of ideas and ordered thoughts. Tags are a natural fit for my kind of blog. So of course I have been busy tagging my entries during my limited spare time.

Tagging remains a work in progress, but you can see the results. Next to the search form on the left panel I added a link that will take you to my tag index. Click on a tag link and you can easily read all blog entries for that particular tag.

I discovered two issues with tagging that might not be obvious. One is that there are no real criteria for proper tagging. Tagging seems to have been invented in response to the inherent difficulty of finding relevant content on the web. Tagging lets you sort of, but not completely do this job. This is because it relies on the person who is tagging to decide which tags are relevant. Most of doing tagging have no training in taxonomy.

Another issue is that it is hard to know which tags to use. Assign too specific a tag to an entry and sifting through tags becomes a real problem. Take for example, a movie review. For my entry on Million Dollar Baby, should I tag Clint Eastwood? What about Hilary Swank? There are no limits to the number of tags that I can assign to an entry. How many tags for an entry constitute too many? Another approach is to limit the entry to the single tag of Movies. Where does one draw the line? How am I supposed to know what tags others will consider to be relevant?

I see tagging as a necessary bump on the road toward a truly semantic web. Just as Windows 95 was a vast improvement over Windows 3.1, it still was flaky, buggy and confusing, just less so than Windows 3.1. Yet it was a necessary step in the evolution of Windows and it still ran programs written for Windows 3.1. Similarly, HTML is not going to go away, but it does slowly evolve over time. Perhaps tagging entries is the next logical step toward finding relevant content on the web.

Tagging will definitely help me find entries on a particular topic. But will it help the casual web surfer? Only time will tell. It is unlikely though that we think in similar ways. Consequently, I could choose different terms to categorize my entries than you would. I do know is that it is time consuming to go and tag over five hundred entries. So far I have completed 2005 to the present. I have about sixty percent of my blog entries left to tag.

There are other new features in MovableType 3.3 that I will likely use in time. Drag and drop templates and widgets are now available. Actually templates have been around in MovableType for a long time, but you still had to know HTML and study the MovableType template tag library to be creative with them. In other words, you had to be a bit of a geek. The drag and drop interface should make it easier for me to maintain the presentation of this site without writing HTML.

One thing is worse as a result of upgrading: comment spam. I don’t know why but spam that used to get sent directly to my junk folder now makes it as a comment for review. I have changed the spam threshold, but so far it has made little difference.

I hope you find the tagging feature useful.

October 18th, 2006 at 08:27pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

The Internet needs your help

What would you think if you picked up your phone, dialed a number and got this message?

“I’m sorry, but this phone company does not allow you to call this number. Have a good day.”

To suggest that you would be irate would probably be putting it mildly. You would probably say something like, “Don’t I pay the phone company $35 a month so I can access anyone in the telephone network? How dare they charge me $35 a month, yet will not let me call the number of my choice! What do they think this is, a totalitarian state?”

No, it is not totalitarianism. It is called capitalism in its latest and ugly modern manifestation. Because in case you have not noticed, except for the phone wires inside your house, you do not own the telephone line. You pay that $35 a month to rent the phone company’s lines. They own it. You do not. If you do not like the situation, you are free to create your own telephone company, or if you are lucky, contract with another company.

Long ago, the government recognized that certain companies perform a public service. That is why they are regulated. The government ensures that your local phone company offers service on a non-discriminatory basis and that the phone company will put every call through.

Suppose you use your phone regularly for phone sex. You like to spend $3.99 a minute to dial 1-800-HOT-MAMA and get your rocks off. Suppose your phone company looked at all its customer records and noticed that 10% of all its calls were going to 1-800-HOT-MAMA. Then suppose it told the owners of Hot Mama Inc. that unless they rebated back to the phone company fifty cents a minute, every word that was spoken by either party would be delayed by one second. Would you also be irate?

Perhaps, but in this case you probably would not make your dissatisfaction public. Yet it is likely that after a few more calls to 1-800-HOT-MAMA, the programmed voice delays will take all the thrill out of calling them. However, one day you notice a circular in your phone bill. “Tired of the poor service with your phone sex company? Try 1-888-BIG-TITS. Only $3.99 a minute and no voice delay!” It would probably not take too long before you have changed phone sex companies. You probably would have no idea that the Big Tits Phone Sex Company sent your Baby Bell fifty cents for every minute you spent connected to it doing some heavy breathing.

At this point you are probably saying, “Yeah, so what? This is all hypothetical and I don’t do phone sex.” Yes, it is hypothetical in the case of our telephone service. However, it is not hypothetical in the case of your internet service. Because it turns out that if you have an internet service provider, there is a good chance that they want more profit than what they can make charging you $39.95 a month. After all, they have spent billions digging up lawns so you can have a high-speed internet service, and the profits have not quite been what they anticipated. Hmm, but maybe Yahoo Search, anxious for more customers of its own, will send your ISP one cent every time a user on your ISP’s network uses Yahoo Search instead of Google Search. Perhaps that is why responses from Google.com to your search queries have been getting so slow lately, but responses from Yahoo appear like lightning. It is too bad that you cannot hear those cash registers going ka ching every time you use Yahoo Search. That does not mean those registers are not ringing up sales.

Welcome to the Brave New Internet, which may soon resemble the opening to that sixties ABC TV show, The Outer Limits:

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all you see and hear.”

In the case of America Online, it has already been there. Last month they prohibited their subscribers from going to dearaol.com. Apparently, someone set up a web site opposing AOL’s plan for guaranteed junk mail delivery. For a fee, AOL wants to allow junk emailers to put their spam directly into your inbox, whether you want it there or not. (With enlightened attitudes like this, it is no wonder AOL is bleeding customers.)

Other profit hungry ISPs are not quite so brazen. Verizon Communications, a high speed ISP in my neighborhood, recently knocked on my door to try to sell me its high-speed FiOS service, says its intentions are more benign. They want to offer services like movies on demand. They are worried that other internet content providers will also want to offer movies on demand, and will insist on the same quality of service as Verizon provides its customers.

I have no problem with Verizon or other companies offering movies on demand. I do have a problem though if their dedicated Internet bandwidth gives preference to their packets over preference to packets from unaffiliated providers. There are solutions to their so-called problem. One solution is to have two lines coming into your house, one for Internet content, and one for their own content. However, even that is not necessary. Since Verizon’s FiOS service works on an optical network, it is easy for network routers to allocate part of the spectrum exclusively for its own use, and part for Internet traffic. There is so much bandwidth on a fiber optic cable that no true high-speed internet service should be impacted. In this case though the portion of the bandwidth dedicated to their movies on demand could be for their unique content only. Yet if they are advertising three megabits per second of download speed to their internet service customers, those three megabits should be open to any lawful content available on the Internet on a nondiscriminatory basis.

I am sad to say that, not surprisingly, Congress so far has been bending over backwards to accommodate ISPs who want to establish quality of service preferences on their networks. This is simply wrong. Just as it is wrong for the phone company to take your money, yet not let you access a phone number you want, it is wrong for them to prohibit you from visiting sites you want to visit, or for them to deliberately discriminate against one provider for the benefit of their own preferred content providers.

While Occam’s Razor is probably not your favorite site, it is quite possible that this site, or even your favorite site, could suddenly be banned by your ISP and there would be nothing you or I could do to change it. I know I probably spend an hour a day reading the website Daily Kos. Right now, there is nothing to prevent my ISP, Cox Communications, from keeping me from accessing this website. (Lord, I hope Fox News does not buy them out!)

This fight is for network neutrality, and it is one we must win. The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, said this just today:

“It’s better and more efficient for us all if we have a separate market where we get our connectivity, and a separate market where we get our content. Information is what I use to make all my decisions. Not just what to buy, but how to vote.”

You are reading this now because you value the Internet. It is in your interest to speak up now. You can start by taking a few minutes to contact your senators and congressional representatives. Perhaps your ISP will let your email go through, but they do not have to. For greatest impact though, it might be better and more effective to use the Plain Old Telephone System. It at least still lets you connect with anyone in the world. Let Congress know how you feel. Let your congressional representative know that you oppose H.R. 5252, the laughingly titled “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006″. Tell them the watered down so-called “Net Neutrality” provisions are meaningless. Also, call your senator and ask them to support Senator Ron Wyden’s bill, the “Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″.

If you have a choice in Internet providers, find out how they stand on Network Neutrality. I asked my ISP, Cox Communications. One of their Customer Care Supervisors responded when I wrote with (emphasis mine):

In response to your question about Cox Communications’ position on network neutrality, we currently do not have any plans to implement any type of tiered internet or filtering of content. Cox Communications wants what is best for our subscribers. Our customers can visit any legal web site they wish on our open network. We want to ensure that we are in a position to continue to provide our high speed internet service in the future. Cox Communications does maintain the right to manage our network as necessary. Per our subscriber agreement, we reserve the right to manage our network for the benefit of our customers. We will continue to manage our network in a way that benefits the vast majority of our customers and their growing need for bandwidth. We feel that Government regulation of Internet services would stifle innovation. It’s not in anyone’s best interest to stifle further innovation and investment - and government regulation of an industry typically does. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions. Thank you.

This response is not exactly reassuring. While they have no current plans, they did not rule out any future plans. And by being against more government regulation, they also give themselves the freedom to restrict or tier content in the future. Let your ISP know you will put your money with ISPs that adhere to strict network neutrality.

For an easy way to find the names, addresses and phone number of your representatives in Congress, visit the Save the Internet website.

Please, take prompt action. What meaning does liberty really have if you cannot use it?

May 24th, 2006 at 08:38pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments