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All posts tagged "usa"


Wednesday, May 25, 2011

High Fibre: A Mini Documentary on High-Speed Internet Access

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 10:33 AM

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-kno...igh-fiber/9263/

"The United States is where the Internet was born. But we're falling behind in the race to the online future. Most of us go online these days using a service that's called broadband - faster than old-fashioned dial-up, and always on. But broadband service in the U.S. lags behind a dozen or more industrialized countries - and we're doing worse every year. Need to Know correspondent Rick Karr traveled to the U.K. and the Netherlands - with support from the Ford Foundation and in collaboration with the website Engadget - to find out how these two countries have jumped ahead of us online. This is a story about capitalism, competition, dynamism and innovation in what is arguably the most important industry of the 21st century. Old-fashioned American values, right? Then why are we being left so far behind?"

It's a little sad when I think about the leadership role North America had when it came to wired Internet access, and how that has been eclipsed by other countries putting more money into infrastructure. I remember having fast, always-on Internet via a cable modem in 1995...yet if I stop and look at what I have today from that cable modem, and what I'm paying for it, it doesn't seem like 16 years of progress has been put into that technology. Watch the documentary - it's worth it.


Monday, July 26, 2010

Sorry Bloggers, the DMCA Will Not Crumble Here Today

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home News" @ 11:00 AM

http://blog.laptopmag.com/court-rul...ile+Technology)

"On Friday, a Federal Court of Appeals judge issued a ruling with potentially important implications for music and movie rippers. In the case of MGE UPS Systems Inc. vs GE Consumer and Industrial Inc, the court ruled that GE employees did not violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) when they bypassed security dongles in order to repair some of MGE's uninterruptible power supplies."

The DMCA, the most frustrating piece of legislation ever written from a technology geek perspective, isn't going anywhere just yet. Laptop Magazine's Avram Piltch (is it me, or does that sound like the name of a Harry Potter character?) nails the issue exactly: there's no encryption being broken here. It would be akin to your DVD player at home needing a special dongle to start up, but the DVD you're putting in for playback having no encryption on it whatsoever. That's not the way things work though, and thus the DMCA hasn't been overruled. Like every other blogger writing about this, I'm not a lawyer either, but I think the judge understood exactly what he was doing with this ruling.


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